Icefall
by NellyN
Summary: There's a place in the past the Doctor can't forget. On a lost ice planet, he must face the psychological aftermath of the Time War, while bringing down an ancient enemy. Who is stalking the Doctor and his companions across time and space?
1. Coffee break

_Author's Note: After their wedding, but before Rory and Amy came home, they traveled for a time with the Doctor. This is one of their adventures. It has continuity with my other stories, "The Doctor is Out" and "Stormcage," but you shouldn't need to read those to understand it. When you're done, I hope you'll take a few minutes to review. Happy reading!  
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"Oh my God," said Rory Williams. "This may be the best coffee I've ever had. Wait, scratch that. I think it's the best thing I've ever tasted, period."

His wife, Amy, sipped from her steaming mug and nodded in agreement. The drink in her hand had wonderful rich dark notes of coffee, chocolate, cinnamon and fresh berries. There was a slightly alcoholic flavor, appropriate for a dessert drink, but something else too. It didn't sit heavy on the tongue. There was no bitterness. She felt fresher and warmer for having sipped it, relaxed but clearheaded. She could drink this every evening and never tire of it.

"It's not really coffee," said the Doctor, taking a tiny sip. "Well it is. Well it isn't." He shook his head. "It's quite special, even among the Chvet. They only drink it on holidays and special occasions. It is a very great honor." He took another sip, savoring the rich drink. "Takes hundreds of years to cure properly," he continued. No one had asked him for an explanation, but no one jumped up to stop him either. "You see, first it has to be processed in the digestive tract of the female—" He caught himself and coughed politely into his hand.

Both Rory and Amy looked into their mugs, matched expressions of horror on their faces.

The Doctor took another sip, but whether this was out of good faith, or simply to hide his expression, neither of his friends could say.

Rory swallowed hard and said, "The female what?"

"You boys take me to the nicest places," Amy sighed.

"It's rather complicated, is all I'm saying." The Doctor tugged at his tie. "Um. I should mention that it would be a really bad idea to—tip it in the snow or anything like that."

"How bad?" said Amy.

Rory was already looking for a good spot to discreetly empty his glass.

"Oh, slightly worse than usual." The Doctor leaned back and took another casual sip. "Though not as bad as it could be."

"All right then," said Rory. Dissuaded from his plan to bury it in the snow underneath their picnic rug, he pinched his nose and poured the liquid down his throat, draining the glass entire in a single gulp. The fact that it tasted as fine and clean as ever didn't comfort him at all. He sat there looking slightly green around the edges. He grinned in a way that suggested he and the Doctor take the argument up when there was no chance of a diplomatic incident.

An awed hush spread through the crowd around them.

They were sitting in a ice cavern, surrounded by white snow. About a dozen feet away, ice crystals fell from a high cliff and ran, chiming, down a frozen river. Each crystal was needle-shaped and about the length of Amy's thumb. It was too cold for bright barbs to melt into water, but they were so fast-moving that they never froze in place. It was an ice waterfall. For the first time in thousands of years, it was bathed in the golden light from the TARDIS. It was extraordinarily beautiful, the sort of thing that would make a brave man weep. The eyeless Fa'dkin Chvet, for whom the sound of the icefall was the heart of their planet's mystery, were able to see it for the first time in the timeship's light.

It is safe to say that they were thoroughly impressed.

Between the TARDIS and the ice river, Amy, Rory and the Doctor sat on a large picnic blanket with an excellent spread: cold chicken, Chvet cheese and red Martian crackers, and tiny sweet pink fruits that glowed in the dark. Surrounding them was a fairly large group of Fa'dkin Chvet: furry white critters the size of kittens and the shape of bells, who walked on dozens of long legs terminating in soft white paws.

The Fa'dkin Chvet lived in the caves, had no eyes, spoke with silence, and made the best coffee in the universe. There were places where a tiny glass of it cost a solid gold ingot. It was worth the price. The travellers weren't drinking that.

The Fa'dkin Chvet also made a secret coffee that was only given to those of the greatest honor and respect: those considered part of the family of the Fa'dkin. You couldn't set a price on it. If you took it from the sacred caves, it went right off. It was their pride, their craft, their cultural identity. Rory had an empty glass of it in his hand. Amy had half a glass in hers.

The Doctor had barely even sipped a finger of his.

Everyone stared at Rory. Even Amy. Even the eyeless furry aliens.

"Oh, come on," said Rory. He did his best to return every hard-edged stare. "I mean,_ honestly_."

"Doctor." Amy's voice had a hint of a shiver in it. She was worried that they had committed some terrible cultural faux pas.

"It's all right," said the Doctor softly. "They're just impressed. Me too."

An ice cube of terror between Rory's shoulder blades thawed a little. He surveyed the Fa'dkin Chvet. He couldn't read anything in their expressions. If they had expressions.

"_Well_," said the Doctor, clapping his hands. "I'm off to have a chat with the high council. Don't wait up." He got to his feet and dusted some crumbs from his jacket. As he moved, Amy thought she saw him wince. It had been days since their last adventure, but the Doctor had been deeply hurt. He seemed to be recovering slowly, though he hid it well from the two people closest to him. Only when he moved too quickly did it seem like his body was too heavy for him.

"Can we come?" said Amy.

"I wouldn't dream," said the Doctor, "of stopping you. But I doubt it will be very interesting. You won't understand what we're saying."

Rory said, "But I thought the TARDIS translated every language."

"It's not really a language. They speak by manipulating silence. There's nothing for the TARDIS to translate." The Doctor thought for a moment. He rested his chin in his hand. "Here, why don't you have a look around. Take some lamps from inside. Just—don't leave the caves, all right? The Fa'dkin aren't the only people on this planet. And there's a Cull on."

"What's a Cull?" said Amy.

"Bit of a ritual," said the Doctor, unhelpfully. "Nothing to worry about down here."

"_Famous last words," _Rory whispered in Amy's ear. "_Better bring a big stick."_

Amy rolled her eyes, but thought it was probably a good idea.

The Doctor stepped out of the shaft of yellow light and was immediately surrounded by a group of Fa'dkin Chvet. The moment he was wrapped in the shadows of the ice cave, he reached into his coat and brought out his sonic screwdriver. He left it on a low setting and a tiny ember of blue light appeared on the tip, casting shadows on the cave walls. He walked carefully so he was never in danger of stepping one of the aliens. Meanwhile another helpful group began gathering and nudging the remains of dinner from the blanket. The Fa'dkin prided themselves on hospitality.

"Get some things together," said Amy softly to her husband. The Doctor was not above lying to them. If he thought that bit of flimflam was going to get her to leave him alone, he was badly mistaken.

"Maybe he just wants a moment to himself." Rory thought he and Amy deserved some quiet time too, though not to walk around some dark ice caves.

"I'll be right back," said Amy. She squeezed his arm.

"Fine." Rory started to roll their picnic blanket. "Don't get culled."

"Two minutes." She slipped away, following the watery light from the Doctor's screwdriver.


	2. Risk

Unfortunately—or, perhaps, fortunately—it didn't seem like the Doctor had been manipulating them after all. The Doctor walked side-by-side with a single Fa'dkin Chvet in absolute silence. The pair were followed by a retinue that might be the High Council.

A careful listener might sense their conversation. There was constant change in air pressure, a weighty quiet— but it could just be a draft. Amy gleaned more from what she could see of the Doctor. His interest in the "conversation" was written in the way he leaned slightly forwards and ignored the path in front of them. He might be reading a particularly diverting book, barely aware of his surroundings. This was just the way he looked when he was deep in a friendly conversation with Amy and Rory.

Amy was already a few dozen feet from the TARDIS, and the path began to wind. When she looked over her shoulder, she could only see the faintest glow from the ship. Her feet slipped and slid underneath her. She began to worry about getting lost, or having to call after the Doctor, and give herself away. She shook her head and turned away, following the yellow light back home.

Rory was waiting, perched nervously on the stoop of the blue box. He scooted over, and she sat beside him. "I think it's all right," she said.

Rory didn't respond for a moment. He seemed on the verge of something, then wisely changed his mind. "He said not to wait up," he said. "That means hours."

"And us with a whole new planet to explore." She sighed deeply and tucked a hair behind her ear. Compared to the chill of the ice caves, the TARDIS was very warm. She tugged at the cord that held her parka closed. There were ice crystals on her lashes, and her face was flushed with cold. "What _shall_ we do?"

Say what you will about Rory; he had a clever answer to that one.

###

Sometime later, Amy locked the door of the TARDIS and pulled her hood up over her head. She rested a hand in the crook of Rory's arm. They walked together along the bank of the ice river, in the opposite direction from the Doctor. They didn't talk at first; like their hosts, young love made conversation out of silence.

Rory had an oil lamp in one hand. He'd found it in the attic, in a trunk that had several other nineteenth-century mementos, including the incredible silk topper he was currently wearing. The lamp cast a wonderful fiery glow over the ice caves. Each turn of the path revealed something new and beautiful: here, a well-tended hallway that wound between regal stalactites and stalagmites; here a slightly warmer cave filled with the sound of dripping and flowing water; here, intricate, lightly coloured carvings in the ice. The carvings must have been made by the last people to live here, since the Doctor said the Fa'dkin Chvet didn't do art. Amy ran her fingertips over it, then placed her spread hand inside pattern that looked, Rory had to admit, pretty much like a human hand.

"We must have been here once," said Rory. He still wasn't used to the idea that humans had spread across the universe like dandelion seeds. Sometimes it seemed like they had been everywhere once. The space they took up! And it had all started in one place, with a few tender families and an eye to the stars. He didn't say any of this out loud, but he did wrap an arm around Amy's shoulder and draw her close.

She nodded. "Look how high all the ceilings are. The Fa'dkin aren't that tall."

They paid more attention to their surroundings after that, realizing they were in a museum of future history. There was something homelike about it, alien as it was.

That feeling—that they knew something about where they were—may have been what led them wrong. They took a turn in the path that opened up on a cavern many times their height. It looked like it might take a whole hour to cross. Rory lifted his lamp high. He couldn't see the ceiling. The sound of the ice river seemed loud but distant. He wondered if was some kind of meeting or prayer hall. Maybe it was a market or a launchpad. Maybe somewhere up there was a cold and unfamiliar sky.

He took a step—

His foot slipped from underneath him. Just like that, he was off the path and knee-deep in snow. His arms went wild as he tried to balance himself out. He let go of the lamp, and it slid down a steep slope and went clattering off a drop.

They were plunged into darkness.

Rory fell and began to slide. He scrambled and found nothing to grip. His grasping fingers made trails in the snow. He heard Amy scream.

The ground fell out from under him and he was tumbling.

He slammed hard into something. It was like being hit by a car. There was an explosion in the back of his head and an echoing ache from every part of his body. His right hand and foot hung over empty air.

But he had stopped falling, and he was still alive.

Very carefully, he pulled his limbs in. He probed the edges and borders of his salvation. His breaths were coming hard, and he'd have bad bruises on the back of his head and back. His ankle wasn't broken, but it was turned and painful. He was on some kind of ledge or shelf, about four feet long and three feet wide. And he couldn't see a thing.

"Rory! Rory!" Rory could feel her panic. If she didn't calm down, she'd go right over herself.

"I'm all right." His voice was a panicked croak. He coughed, cleared his throat, and said, "Amy! I'm all right!"

His voice echoed, up and down and against a distant wall. He rested his ringing head on the ice shelf. The gap he'd fallen through had been narrow, almost invisible. He wondered how deep it was. Judging by the echo of his voice, it was very deep indeed.

Silence.

"Amy," Rory called, "can you see anything?"

"I can't. It's dark." Her voice was distant and muffled.

"Get up against the wall."

Moving gingerly, Rory took his own advice. He sat up and put his back against the wall. His head swam. He swallowed a wave of nausea and pulled his feet up so they weren't hanging over the edge. Sitting this way, he felt almost secure.

"What now?" said Amy. In the pitch dark, she was only slightly safer than he was.

"Wait. The... the aliens can see in the dark, eh? They'll come and get us." He made a face. He sounded like he was trying to convince himself. They hadn't seen a single Fa'dkin on their walk. He hoped they were just being discreet. "It'll be no time at all."

His ears rang. He could hear the whisper of the ice river. In the darkness, his pulse was as loud and busy as a London motorway.


	3. Secrets & lies

The Doctor knew a lot of things.

For example, he knew that Amy was following him down the winding path. He took the long way to to his destination, because he knew she wouldn't come very far without Rory; their last separation was too recent in her memory. The Doctor was a difficult man to keep a secret from. It was also very easy for him to keep secrets from other people. It was hardly fair if you thought about it.

The Doctor and the Fa'dkin walking beside him talked of casual things until The Doctor was certain that Amy was gone. As soon as she'd disappeared, he took a side path, slid down a short slope, and jumped across a furrow and onto a narrow ice bridge. Behind him the many tiny feet of the Fa'dkin scattered his footprints. Anyone trying to follow him now would have the very devil of a time.

He moved among the sacred caves with the familiarity of a boy in his childhood home. He didn't need to look before he leapt; he knew this corner of the planet almost as well as he knew the TARDIS's control panel.

_Kept everything the same, haven't you? _he said in the Fa'dkins' quiet language.

_We did not expect you back so soon, _said the creature at the Doctor's ankle. His name, improbably, was Geoff, and he was the representative of the Fa'dkin high council most familiar with the Time Lords. This was a gross oversimplification of who Geoff was and what he did—in fact, it would be more accurate to say that he _was_ the Fa'dkin High Council, and _they_ represented "Geoff"—but the Doctor wasn't interested in the biopsychology of Fa'dkin Chvet identity today. He had errands, and Geoff didn't care what he thought anyway.

Geoff continued, _It's only been—_

"I know when it is." While he was familiar with this planet's southern pole, he came here infrequently. The problem was, no mater when he tried to focus the TARDIS's chronometer, he _always_ ended up here around the same time. If he came back too often, he'd run into himself. Whether this was some sort of temporal defence of the Fa'dkin, or something to do with _The Doctor's _biopsychology, was another question the Doctor didn't care to dwell on for too long. Regardless of how it made him feel, it did have certain... conveniences.

Geoff said nothing. By speaking out loud, the Doctor had offended him.

_Sorry_, said the Doctor.

The Fa'dkin followed the Doctor among another familiar path, then came up short at a doorway. Light came from the door—a lonely silver glow, like very early dawn. The Doctor hesitated, then put his screwdriver away.

_Aren't you going to go in? _The language they spoke was not telepathy, exactly—the TARDIS translated telepathy even better than speech—but a controlled non-sound. Humans and Time Lords did the same thing sometimes, speaking without speaking. The Fa'dkin had simply taken an evolutionary leap. You had to learn their language the old-fashioned way. Even someone as ridiculously clever as the Doctor had to study it for weeks. They were the kind of friends you wanted if you had a lot of secrets.

_He doesn't want visitors today_, whispered Geoff. He crouched against the snow, agitated. _He casts us out._

_I'm sorry,_ the Doctor repeated.

_He's not in his right mind_, said Geoff. _We will wait._

The Doctor looked at his feet. Geoff couldn't see that, but he would hear the sincerity in the Doctor's words. _You're better than he deserves._

_ Without him, we would not be_. The Fa'dkin hesitated. _He is our... brother_. _ That is the word, yes?_

_ Yes, _said the Doctor. _That's the word._

The Doctor realised he was hesitating as much as his friend, but with even less reason. _He_ could hardly be cast out. He took a deep breath and stepped forward.

Beyond the doorway was a small dome, carved out of the ice. It was nothing a Fa'dkin would have built or lived in, but something lived there. If you could call it living.

There was a kinetic lamp in the middle of the room, spitting out weak light. It was low on power. It need needed a good shake, but the Doctor didn't give it one. He liked it the way it was.

The lamp illuminated almost nothing. A bookcase with a few books and artifacts. A low brass bed covered in a pile of rags. Yesterday's meal, made by the Fa'dkin, left on the nightstand, not even touched. The place stank. The Doctor didn't like there at all; it reminded him of things. He had no reason to spend any more time there than necessary, so he dropped to his knees and began to dig in a forgotten corner. When he reached ice, he took out his sonic screwdriver and started to melt through.

"You're back."

The Doctor fumbled the screwdriver, then dropped it. He turned around.

"Yes." He waved. "Hello."

The pile of rags moved. "This is all very interesting." The voice was grim and bored. The light reflected a pair of coal-black eyes. Their owner sat up, throwing off a cocoon of blankets.

He was a very old man. Not merely old, but _elderly_. Frail and small. His beard was white, and his head was bald. One of the old man's arms was bound wrist to shoulder in filthy bandages, and he had a distant, glassy look that sometimes ran to madness. His face was drawn and suggested dozens of missed meals. His hands were steady, and his voice was strong, but it was a strange sort of strength. The Doctor had seen similar in the movements of people who expected to die at any moment. As well as a few who wished they would.

The Doctor was moved with a mixture of compassion and revulsion for the poor man, but neither emotion was very helpful. He bent back to his work, scooping idly at the hiding-place with his hands. "The other Doctor _has_ been here to bury it already."

"Oh yes," said the old man. "Just a few hours ago, as a matter of fact."

"Tcha." That was a close call. The Doctor retrieved the sonic screwdriver and melted through a few more inches of ice. He withdrew a bundle wrapped in plastic, read the note, and inspected the contents. He got to his feet and dusted himself off.

The old man yawned. "Anything you'd like to leave for the next one?"

"I'm not coming back. I'm done with you. I'm done with this place."

The old man chuckled. It was a nasty laugh, dripping with scepticism and secret knowledge.

"You could leave too," said the Doctor. "It's changed, you know. Since the war. Everything's different."

"I don't want to see it," said the other. "I'm tired. Let it burn for all I care."

"It's still beautiful."

"Try and make me, and I'll kill you."

The Doctor nodded, humoring him. "Nice to see you again." It wasn't nice at all.

"My regards to Geoff and the Fa'dkin." That cruel laugh echoed through the chamber.

The Doctor's skin crawled. He got out of there as fast as he could.

Geoff was waiting by the door.

_How long has he been this way? _The Doctor felt cold, upset, and a bit confused, like he had just woken from a bad dream.

_ Not long, _said Geoff._ He'll perk up soon enough._

_ If you want, I can take him away. _He would, too. The Doctor wanted nothing more than to be out of here as soon as possible, but if the old man ever exhausted the compassion of the Fa'dkin, the Doctor would take him away in the TARDIS. He was nobody else's responsibility.

The Fa'dkin were wise friends with an eye toward the future. _No trouble. We under—_

A commotion in the distance interrupted them. If the caves weren't so silent, the Doctor might not have heard it. He blinked. His mind was already off this miserable rock and onto another, less haunted planet. The racket that accompanied disaster brought him back to ground.

_Your companions, _Geoff pointed out. _Of course you must go._

Of course he must. The Doctor gathered himself up, slung the bundle over his shoulder, and _ran_, his feet eager to leave an old nightmare behind him—

If only to catch up with a new one.


	4. Problem solving

Here's what they never tell you about time: it isn't. Not the way other things are. It's impossible to measure, touch, or observe. It only exists relative to other things. Einstein knew. He said, "An hour on a hot stove is an eternity, while an hour with a pretty girl is a moment." It was one of the first things Rory really _got_ when he started learning about time and space.

Einstein might have added that five minutes hanging over a bottomless pit, clinging to a tiny ledge, unable to see anything at all, might as well be five hundred years. Time got really _big _when it was all you had. Cold trickled down Rory's spine and bit one of his hands; he'd lost a glove at some point. A faint orange glow seemed to build up at the corners of his eyes, only to be blinked away, a mirage. At his back he could hear a regular squeaking, like a corkscrew inside the ice. It worried him a bit. He'd been traveling enough to have a really _thorough_ idea of what might live under the surface of an alien planet. But since that list currently included one Rory Williams, he was afraid to move. The wall at his back was his only point of reference.

Five minutes.

Amy yelped in surprise.

"What?" Rory's heart, which had already been going at a good clip, may have broken the sound barrier. "Amy!"

"It's all right," she said. "It's one of them. The Fa'dkin."

Time started again. "Oh thank God. Tell it we need a torch. And some rope. And a bit of..."

"Babe, I can't tell it anything. It doesn't talk."

"Yeah, but it is _intelligent_, isn't it?"

"Don't be cross with me, it can hardly... hold on." Snow crunched under Amy's feet, and bits of it fell on Rory's head. "I think that's the Doctor."

"Brilliant," Rory said. Moments later, the chasm was filled with the faintest pastel light. For the first time Rory got something of a look at his position. He regretted it immediately.

The ice shelf hung on the wall of a great deep hole. The pit was perfectly square, and the bottom was lost in shadow. The other three walls were dozens of feet away; you could drop two police boxes down side-by-side and never touch a wall, or even knock Rory off his perch. Above him was a crust of ice and snow, forming a sort of cap over the hole. The light came from the narrow gap through which Rory had fallen.

He hadn't gone down very far at all. He if he dared to stand, could almost reach up and touch the crack. Over time some meltwater and snow had dripped through, forming a horizontal wedge: Rory's fragile shelter.

The wedge settled.

Rory pushed himself away, nearly falling off the opposite side.

"Rory?" It was the Doctor. The shelf settled again. Part of it crumbled and dropped into the hole.

"Stop it!" Rory yelled. The soft whistle from the sonic screwdriver vibrated the ground underneath him. He had to stand to keep from falling off. "Doctor!"

"What's that, Rory?"

"Oy! Stop! Sonic-ing!"

"Right? Right. Of course. Sonic screwdriver—bit of snow—before you know it you've got an avalanche on your hands. Sorry Rory." The light went out. Seconds later, another, light came on. It was orange and flickering. A flame.

"Matches," the Doctor said. "Always carry a box of matches. You never know when you might need a proper fire. Here, you can have this one, Amy. I've got another. Are you all right? Of course you are." Hiss. Splutter. The orange light got brighter, and Rory felt even colder. There was something dreadfully lonely about seeing a distant flame. A single candle can stave off hypothermia. That was another thing Rory had learned in what he considered his post-graduate space survival course.

"Now. Rory. Is there any place down there to land the TARDIS?"

Rory was now standing on half a shelf, facing the wall. What was left of it had gentle slope, and he had to keep pushing with his weak ankle to keep himself upright. He looked carefully over his shoulder. "I don't see anything."

"Great," said the Doctor. "Wonderful. I do love a puzzle."

"Can't you just put it on the path and drop a rope down?" Rory suggested.

"Could do," said the Doctor.

"Then do it." Rory could hear Amy pacing up above. "Let's just go and get him."

"Could do," the Doctor repeated. "But it's a question of physics, isn't it, Rory? A tiny screwdriver rogered your footing. How would you feel about me parking the TARDIS up here?"

The Doctor tapped the path with his foot, and more snow fell on Rory's head. Rory started to say something, but the Doctor interrupted. "I agree. Absolutely not. But—_of course!_ Stupid me. Have you got your key?"

Hope leaped through Rory's heart. He patted his shirt and found his TARDIS key on a lanyard round his neck. He squeezed it with his bare hand. "What?" said Rory. "Are you going to use it beam me up or something?"

It was like Rory had just suggested they put paper bags over their heads. "Are you mentally ill? Did you spend your entire honeymoon watching television? No; I just wanted to say: take care not to lose it. I don't want to spend the rest of the year digging it up."

Rory pressed his head against the wall. He didn't know much about Time Lord history—the Doctor was famously closed-lipped about it—but sometimes he suspected that they'd been irritated to death. He told himself to be patient. When the Doctor was talking, he was thinking, and thinking was good. Probably.

"Let's see: Chvet, south pole, ice caverns, circa fiftieth century with previous human habitation c. forty-eighth..." The Doctor snapped his fingers. "_Light!_ You need more light. A moment. Amy, hold this."

"A jar?" said Amy. There was a clatter from above.

"Matches. _And_, yes, a jar. Astutely observed. Rory, can you still hear me?" The Doctor's voice was more distant.

"A bit." This sounded promising.

"Get as close to the wall as you can."

Rory already was as close to the wall as he could be, but he made a show of hugging it.

"Amy," said the Doctor, "tell me you used the oil lamps from the attic."

"Um. Yes?"

"Bless your romantic hearts. Heads up, Rory." Something hit the snow and rolled down the slope. It clattered through the hole, barely missed Rory's head, and plunged into the pit. It looked like a shooting star, but Rory realized it was a bundle of lit matches in a glass jar. It was like a little tiny firebomb. After what seemed like half an age, the fire jar struck the floor. Somewhere down there, Rory's lamp had fallen, spreading oil all over. There was a _whuff_, and a large fire kindled at the bottom of the hole. The light filtered up to the top, along with the barest breath of heat.

"Ha!" said the Doctor.

_Yes,_ Rory thought, _because what this situation really needed was a lake of fire._

"Tell me what you see." The Doctor's voice was intent.

Rory had another look around. The light was brighter and steadier. It flickered off dark wood and bright metal. There was some kind of scaffolding, all around the hole. Most of it was encased in ice, and some of it was rusted or rotting, but Rory knew what it was. "It's a mine shaft."

"A mine shaft!" The Doctor echoed. "A _mine shaft_."

"Um," said Rory.

"Okay," said the Doctor. "Look around you. Most of the scaffolding is structural, eh? Actually, all of it is. But there's bracing at the corners. Ceramic and, hmm, synthwood. Do you see it?"

Rory didn't see any "synthwood," but there was bracing. Thick wooden beams, gripped at either end by heavy iron clips, formed small triangles against the corners. There was about ten feet between each one.

"Now, all you need to do is use those. Hop down to the bottom; we'll meet you there with the TARDIS, and be off this planet and not a moment too soon. God, I'm good. We're good."

"I'm supposed to hop, am I?" Rory muttered. "Just jump down a mine shaft twenty stories high."

"It's easy if you don't think about it."

Rory was having a lot trouble thinking about anything else. Amy loudly protested, and the Doctor shushed her.

"And look lively," said the Doctor. "That fire will be out in about three minutes. See you in a tick."


	5. Intelligent life

"We can't help him." The Doctor pulled Amy down the path. The confidence in his voice had faded, replaced by raw honesty. "I'm sorry—you know I am—but we _can't_. There's nothing more we can do."

Amy twisted out of the Doctor's light grip. She glared. "I know. I'm not asking you to save him."

"Except you are." He turned to look at her. She was all alight with fear and anger. She kept looking behind her, almost turning, circling back: a compass needle searching for true north. She knew everything the Doctor said was true. The only thing they could do at the edge of that chasm was fall in. It didn't matter. It still felt like betrayal. She wasn't asking. She was pleading.

She gathered up her confidence under the Doctor's gaze and plastered on a confident grin. "Well, let's go then. We'll meet him." She wiped her eyes. When she looked up, her tears were gone. "Like you said."

"Yes, we will," the Doctor said. He extended a hand. "And everything will be perfectly all right. Do you believe me?"

She nodded and took his hand. She believed. She believed because all of the alternatives were unacceptable. She believed because he had never led her wrong and would die before he did.

Nevertheless, the walk back was longer and colder than she remembered. She and Rory had passed through these caverns so recently that their footprints were still there. Amy felt nothing.

The Doctor was doing riffs on the theme of Rory being clever and resourceful, and generally being comforting in his awkward, slightly daft way, when he suddenly shoved her into the wall. He tried to stand in front of her. For a moment she was jolted back into her regular self. She pushed back. "And what was that for, exactly?"

There was a swarm of Fa'dkin Chvet around the blue box, nudging it this way and that. They weren't very big, and they didn't seem dangerous on their own, but Amy knew a mob scene when she saw one. Their panic and confusion was catching. A soft _whump_ came from above, and the cave trembled.

"No, no, _no!" _The Doctor yelled over the noise. "Get away from my TARDIS! I demand to speak to someone in..." He remembered himself and went still and quiet. Amy got the impression that he was complaining just as empathetically in the language of silence. A group of aliens immediately surrounded him. He crouched low to listen to them.

"What?" said Amy. "What's going on?"

"Shh!" He stood, whispering in her ear. His breath was hot on her face, and when he gripped her shoulder, it almost hurt. "We have to leave, right now. It's never come this far south before. Not in numbers. The Fa'dkin think it's because of us, and I think they're right."

_Whump_. Snow showered from the roof.

"Doctor, you're not making any sense."

"_Please_ be quiet." He shook her, and she pushed him again. _Whump_. "That," the Doctor whispered, pointing up, "Is the Cull. They're looking for advanced technology here, and they've just found it." _Whump-whump-whump. _"So we have to go." He grabbed her elbow and pulled her toward the TARDIS. The Fa'dkin made way for them.

Amy planted her feet. "And we're just going to leave my husband and God knows how many other people to die?"

"No." He shook his head. "We're going to lead the Cull away. They can't come in here. They can't find..." He unlocked the TARDIS and swung the door open. It was already humming, as if it felt the Doctor's urgency. "What the Fa'dkin are hiding. Shut the door."

The things you believe in when the alternatives are impossible. Amy set her jaw and slammed the door. The Doctor pulled the lever, and the box melted away.

###

Lessons of time travel: A moment spent _not doing_ was a moment lost. Rory said something to himself about damned Doctors and their damned mad ideas, but at the same time he took his measure of the scaffolding. The nearest corner was about a dozen feet from his left hand. He couldn't reach it, but the next level down didn't seem too far.

No space for a run-up. But a moment spent not doing is a moment lost.

Rory leaned forward, focused on the tiny scaffolding. He pushed with his feet. He reached out with everything he had.

And plunged right past it. Obviously. It was a foot square at its thickest point and it was a dozen feet away. It's not like Rory could fly. At least he was headed in the right direction. He bloodied his chin on the next one. Finally, he caught third one with one hand. His fingers held for less than a second. He dropped into the fourth space down, scrambled to right himself and succeeded. He took two deep, gasping breaths and was neatly sick over the side.

With one hand on the wall, he looked down. The fire was already dimming, and he was hardly any closer to the bottom. He looked up.

A snowball seemed to be drifting through the air. It breathed, puffing up.

Rory rubbed his eyes.

Not a snowball; a little parachute. The fire below seemed to light it orange, while providing it with fine thermal currants to glide between. It settled on a corner, one level up and opposite. As it landed, its small body billowed and settled like a skirt. A Fa'dkin. Of course they'd have a clever way to travel through their multi-leveled nick.

It had a pretty smug look for something with no face. Rory wiped his bloody chin with a sleeve. "Sure, that's all very well for you," he said. "I'd like to see you try it my way."

The Fa'dkin seemed to take that as a challenge. It tiptoed to the edge of its corner. It hung over the edge, gripping with three snowy paws, and lowered itself gently to to the next level.

Rory scoffed. Then he did the same. He threw an arm over the wooden edge and lowered himself carefully, till he could just barely touch the next level with the tips of his toes. He said a prayer and let go. Every muscle in his body protested, but he didn't stumble. Two steps in and he was on solid ground.

_Intelligent._

"Right then," said Rory, lowering himself onto the next level.

Fed up with the human way of traveling, the Fa'dkin puffed itself up and let itself drift down, keeping level with Rory. It settled in the opposite corner. It wasn't designed for long flights, and it would have to climb back up, but as long as it went down piecemeal, it could hardly be hurt. The same seemed to be true for Rory, as long has he didn't rush.

"Are you a Time Lord?" it said said a strange, wheezing voice.

"Bloody hell." He was in the midst of creeping down to the next level. He dropped down, steadied himself, wiped his chin. He looked up at the Fa'dkin. "No. I'm... human. We're called humans. But that's funny."

"Funny?" The Fa'dkin drifted past him and settled on a moldy corner.

_That's the second time in a fortnight I've been mistaken for a Time Lord_, Rory thought. _Now _that's _funny. _He said, "You can talk?"

He lowered himself down and caught his breath on the next level. The Fa'dkin was so silent for so long that Rory began to worry. He _had_ taken a couple of hard knocks on the head.

The furry creature puffed up, but didn't float. It blew air through vents on top of its body. "Your language," it wheezed, "is disgusting."

And what was Rory supposed to say to that? So's your mum?

"I'm serious," it breathed. "It's like eating with your toes. It's like walking on your tongue." Its voice was reedy, punctuated with weird harmonies and odd gasps.

_It's like drinking coffee made in somebody's digestive tract_. Time to start over. "Hello. I'm Rory," he said politely.

"I thought you were humans."

"I am humans. Human." He dropped down again, nearly slipped, settled, and did the next one just as quickly. It was getting darker, but he was getting closer to the ground.

"Do you have two names?" said the Fa'dkin. "Did you forget? Are you stupid or something?"

Rory said, "And what d' they call you?"

"Fa'dkin Chvet."

"Yes, but..." That was the problem with the universe. There was a very thin line between _intelligent life_ and _insufferable prat_. On the bright side, Rory was well up on his insufferable prat coping skills. "Nice to meet you."

The Fa'dkin Chvet alighted on another corner. It couldn't talk and fly at the same time."I have bad news."

Rory nodded. "The TARDIS isn't coming." What else was new?

"Wrong. It's coming."

"Okay," said Rory.

Far above, the ceiling rumbled. A great clot of snow plunged down, brushed past Rory and dropped onto the fading oil fire. It went out with a hiss. Rory was halfway between one level and another. He barely held onto the piling above him, and his toes barely touched the one below.

"It's going to be late," said the Fa'dkin Chvet.


	6. Smaller on the inside

The TARDIS materialised in the air, hundreds of feet above a mountain range. Amy gripped a railing as the box bobbed like a cork in the sea. "Count 'em," said the Doctor. He pinged from one bank of controls to another. "Count the bangs. We're going to keep time."

There was a terrific noise. What Amy had heard as dull _whumps_ inside the caves were great big bangs up above. A shock wave from each one buffeted the TARDIS. The ship itself gave its familiar churning sigh, accompanied by the crash and slam of tools and books and belongings.

A bang rocked the ship. The Doctor said, "That's one! Keep time."

Amy buried the cold anxiety in her heart and jumped up the stairs, taking her place at the Doctor's side. Over his shoulder, she saw only blue sky on the viewer. Then a wave of light seemed to build out of nothing and buffet the tiny box.

Amy barely had time to grab a handlebar. "Two!" she called.

"Right ho," said the Doctor. He turned a couple of dials and pounded a set of buttons. The churning noise got louder. The dashboard lights were as bright as Amy had ever seen them. "Third time pays for all." He pushed her aside to get at a lever behind her, then whirled around again to tag another with the tip of his toe.

The light wave built up again. It slammed into the TARDIS hard enough to make Amy dizzy. All the screens flashed with static. When they cleared, alarms began to rattle and beep in the belly of the TARDIS.

"_Gotcha_!" said the Doctor. He pulled the periscope screen over. Amy could see three distant green dots. While they watched, the dots changed orientation and bore down on the TARDIS. "That's right, come and get us," the Doctor murmured. "You've spent all this time looking for a microchip or a vacuum tube and you found _me_. Ha!"

He tapped the screen, then winked at Amy. "All right, old girl." He leaned back over the control panel, speaking tenderly to the TARDIS. "Let's show them what they've caught in their little net." He pulled the biggest lever he could reach, and the TARDIS vanished.

Amy was jolted on her feet again. "What are we doing?"

The TARDIS was now nearly on top of the green dots. They were machines the size of beer kegs. Three of them, with tiny copper propellers, flying in formation. They didn't seem to be piloted by anyone or anything. Nevertheless, while Amy and the Doctor watched, the green kegs seemed to be hit with a wave of confusion. They'd lost their target. They switched places with each other, scanning the empty place they'd oriented upon. They dropped slightly lower, then higher, while the TARDIS was carried along in their wake. The Doctor inspected them with the same curiosity as Amy. A tiny furrow appeared between his eyebrows.

Then Amy's question seemed to catch up with him. "We're being a distraction. Good one, too. _Look _at that." Light built up around one of the barrels. The Doctor gripped the handlebar on the periscope screen. He nodded to Amy, and she adjusted her footing and braced for impact.

Not a moment too soon. The wave exploded out from the keg and slammed violently into the TARDIS. At this proximity, it sounded like someone had thrown a fistful of marbles against the door.

"That's one," said the Doctor. "Whew! Haven't done anything like that in ages, have we, hmm?" He wasn't talking to Amy. That was his special TARDIS voice. He sounded like an old man talking to his dear little dog. He patted the console affectionately. "All right for another go?"

A flat buzz sounded from deep within the gears. It sounded angry.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "All _right_. I'm just saying we're knocking on a bit—"

The next wave hit them, and the Doctor was nearly pitched into the console.

"Two," said Amy. Despite herself, she had to hide a smile.

"We'll get them properly mixed up now." He tapped an equation into the typewriter and pulled the lever again. They were now side-on to the group of kegs, and several hundred feet away. The two that had fired went zooming off toward where the TARDIS had just been, while the third was knocked out of formation. The lost one went spinning away on its axis, and fired its beam of energy too weakly and too late. The wave that hit the TARDIS was hardly a ripple.

"Those beams." Amy caught her breath. "That's how they find us."

"That's how they find anything," said the Doctor. He pounded another sequence of letters, numbers and buttons into the ship. "It's echolocation. They fire energy at us, we bounce it back to them, _but_..." He pulled the terminal lever again.

Another hard jolt. Amy was starting to feel ill. The TARDIS was a very good time machine, but it wasn't a _perfect_ time machine. Each time they traveled there was a bit of slippage—a couple of seconds of life that dropped away without being truly lived. The Doctor had explained this to her many months ago, but she knew it instinctively. She felt every lost moment. Anyone would. Well—anyone except the Doctor, maybe. He looked like he was having the time of his life.

"Hold this down, will you?" He guided her finger to a blue button. When he was certain she had it, he stepped away from the controls and down the steps. He threw the latch and opened the door.

They were falling. Outside there was a mighty wind, though a mere breeze came through the door. It set Amy's hair flying.

More alarmingly, they were falling at the same level as the energy barrel they had knocked off its axis a few moments ago. It was just outside the door, sparking and humming. Cool as paint, the Doctor grabbed a handle and pulled it aboard. He shut the door and locked it.

It took everything Amy had not to run down and punt the thing back outside.

The Doctor took no note of her alarm. He kneeled beside the machine and investigated it with the sonic screwdriver. The barrel was a short cylinder with a round nose. At the tip of the nose was a skinny antenna with a red bulb on the end. Even to Amy, it looked cheap and crude. Energy gathered at its tip. The Doctor's nimble fingers felt for a latch and found it. He twisted off the cap to reveal a nest of wires. The machine shuddered, and the light at the tip dispersed harmlessly as static.

"Dumb terminal," the Doctor muttered. He stuck the screwdriver into the nest. "But everything dumb reports to something smarter." He held up the screwdriver and peered at it. He blinked a few times and shook his head. That tiny furrow came back.

He returned to the control panel and typed a few symbols into it. He was suddenly subdued. All his wild excitement drained away.

"What's the problem?"

"Nothing," said the Doctor. "It's just strange. The people who run the Cull make those." He nodded at the energy barrel. With its head off and wires spilling on the floor, it was little more than electronic roadkill. "They're ceremonial here, but easy to build. It's just a bit of wire and a microwave. Kids' stuff. You can let go of that button."

"Ceremonial technology echolocators?" Every day, the universe came up with a new way to make Amy feel small.

The Doctor nodded. "It's giving me weird information though. I've seen something like it before, but not since..." He chewed his lip. "Well, let's run it down. I'm not going to spend the rest of the day playing find-the-lady with this lot." He seemed to think it was below him. He typed a few more things into the TARDIS. "All right, we've had our fun with the children. Let's go see mummy."

He threw the lever.

Later on, Amy would try to put the next sequence of events in order. She was never able to do it to her satisfaction. It all happened at once: the Doctor throwing the lever, a grinding cry, horrible pain—and the Doctor throwing the lever. If you fast-forwarded into Hell, then rewound back to the moment before death, it would feel something like that.

The Doctor's hands were curled over the controls. He had gone all pale.

"What's wrong?"

"Are—" The Doctor swallowed painfully. A fine tremble started in his hands. "Are you all right, Amy?"

"I think so." She didn't seem to be hurt anywhere, but the Doctor's obvious terror made her uncertain.

"Good girl," the Doctor whispered to his time machine. He blew a shaky breath between his teeth. He rubbed a bit of the console with his thumb. "Brilliant as ever. You did right." He took another deep breath and closed his eyes. "Thank you."

"What was that?" said Amy.

"A mistake," said the Doctor. "They don't make things like that anymore."

The large display by the door was flickering. The Doctor made a few adjustments with unsteady hands.

They were parked on a broad plain ringed by high mountains. A few leafless trees were in the distance. The silence was profound. Though she had never thought much of snow and ice—a give her a busy street any day—the scene quieted Amy's throbbing heart.

"Let's see it then." The Doctor's tone was resolute. He toggled a stick on the console, and the image on the screen moved slowly to the right. "Amy, come here, please."

She stepped up beside him. With unusual formality, he took her hand and held it tight.

"It's nothing," he said, with false courage. "It's probably just—"

A shadow appeared on the screen. It spread. The Doctor's grip on Amy's hand tightened until she could feel her own pulse throbbing in her fingertips. She squeezed back.

Something filled the viewer. It was a machine, but to call it a mere machine was to do it an injustice. It was massive. Ten times the height of the TARDIS. It made the timeship look like a flea beside a dog.

It had the look of wood, and it made a constant wooden knocking sound. _Something at the door._ It rolled across the snow on wide wooden treads. Inside, it was all sharp gears and constant motion. The gears tossed a little wooden pill between them. It wasn't really little, of course. Up close it would be a decent-sized room. But you couldn't _get_ up close. Everywhere you looked, the wooden pill wasn't. It was lifted and dropped between gears in a wild manner that defied pattern and prediction.

Amy had been time-traveling for a long time. She knew that machine. She knew its purpose. Anyone would.

"Doctor," she said.

"They _don't make them any more_," he insisted. "There's no reason."

Wrong, Amy thought. There's one reason.

In the heart of that machine was a room a TARDIS couldn't materialise inside. There was no way to predict where it would be. Any Time Lord who tried to set down in it would be crushed immediately in the whirring wheels.

It was a war-maker with only one enemy.

Amy said, "Run."


	7. Shadowman

Rory was cold.

There was snow down his shirt and snow in his pockets. A few seconds ago, there had been snow in his trainers, but now it was just ice water. There was no heat left from the Doctor's mad oil fire; it had been instantly extinguished. He shivered and rubbed his hands together. His teeth rattled and his joints hurt. He had long daydreams about being warm.

He was at the bottom of the mine shaft, sitting in the snow. The dark was endless and pitiless. It was also very quiet. He could hear nothing but the little sounds he was making: his own deep breaths like the ticks of a watch; the crunch of snow underneath him as he shifted his weight; soft clicks or sighs as he licked his lips or turned to look up or behind him.

Alone with himself, Rory drew his knees up to his chest and waited.

"Move."

He had survived a short but hard tumble from the mine shaft wall. He'd more bruises than friends, and the cold was very bitter, but Rory did not despair. He simply didn't have it in him. In less than a year, he'd gone from being an average bloke in his twenties to being a professional time traveler, all without—it seemed—any sort of decision on his part. Not that long ago, getting rear-ended on his way home qualified as a a big deal. Now he was freezing to death by inches, deep in the heart of an alien planet, separated from his wife, abandoned by the Doctor, and _that_ was a really nice break from the usual amount of peril. It was mad and dangerous, but Rory had constructed a mental refuge for himself composed mostly of relentless patience and sensibility. _So, here we are,_ was how he summed everything up. There was really no point in making any more or less of it than that.

_"Move,_ stupid human."

Thinking that way was not always easy, but he was getting better at it all the time. The other day he'd had breakfast in a nebula—all neon pink gas and brilliant infinity. He had munched on a croissant and sipped a cup of tea and thought, _so, here we are. _Even the disaster a few weeks ago at the prison seemed settled, disturbing as it had been at the time.

Something warm gripped his shoulder. He smelled a warm animal smell, not unpleasant, but unfamiliar. The Fa'dkin Chvet. Rory didn't flinch. He wasn't surprised.

"Why aren't you going?" Its breath was hot on Rory's cheek. "I told you to move. Did someone fill your brain up with rubbish one night while you were sleeping?" The fact that it seemed to take the Fa'dkin great effort to speak didn't stop it from filling the air with invective. Rory wondered who had decided it was a good idea to teach it to speak. He had a theory.

"I can't see," said Rory. "I need light. A torch or a candle."

"What's light?" said the Fa'dkin. "What's torch?"

Rory nodded. Of course it wouldn't know. "It doesn't matter. There's no point going anywhere." After all, if the TARDIS was going to show up anywhere, it was going to be here. It was just a matter of time.

"Can't stay here," said the Fa'dkin. "Dangerous. Stupid."

_Compared to what_, Rory thought, but he said, "Why?"

"Shadowman. He'll find us. He's like you but not like you. Bigger, cleverer, angrier."

Oh great. They didn't understand light, but they had something called a shadowman. And who knew what "bigger" meant to a Fa'dkin. It could be anything. The "shadowman" could be twelve feet tall and have fists like boulders. Or he could have a big spiritual or psychological presence. Rory had been a traveler long enough that he could not rule out any possibility. Rory felt the Fa'dkin bouncing on his shoulder in its eagerness to be anywhere else.

"I can't see," said Rory. "I don't know where I am. If there's anything out there for me to trip over, I could fall and hurt myself. And the TARDIS is supposed to come back here." He was trying to be very clear. The TARDIS was where he would find Amy. "I can't go anywhere."

"Right, yes, the TARDIS." The Fa'dkin crept down his arm and onto his knee. "I can take you to it. It's very close. You can almost touch it."

Rory considered this for about two milliseconds. "No."

"Why? Do you want to die? Are you—"

"Because," said Rory patiently, "contrary to popular opinion, I am not the dumbest person in the universe. All this just happened to me, not ten days ago. It was vents and Gorgorans that time, but I've still got aliens above and below, and I've had about enough of mucking around underground until something really terrible happens to me. If it's all the same to you, I'll wait here for my wife, and whatever-it-is will just have to run into me this time."

"Quite right, too." A third voice in the dark. An old man. "Bravo."

The Fa'dkin Chvet went up on its toes. It made a strange whistling noise and hopped from Rory's knee into the snow.

"Oh yes?" The stranger had a nasty tone in his voice, and also an ill-sounding wheeze. "Well, I'm not very happy to see you down here either. Go on, get out of here, you old busybody." His voice echoed off walls near and distant, so Rory couldn't get a good bead on the speaker's size. He could be twelve feet tall or the same height as the Fa'dkin. He could be within arm's reach, or on the other side of the cavern. He certainly didn't _sound_ like a two-headed killing machine, but Rory didn't trust that.

He was on his feet and feeling for a better hiding place.

Nearby, the Fa'dkin whistled again. "_Shadowman_. I warned you."

"Bugger off." Something sailed past Rory's face and hit a wall. A snowball? A rock? Rory's lips and fingertips were going numb. It hurt to move, and he couldn't do it silently.

Another object blew past Rory and struck the ground nearby. The Fa'dkin whined and drummed the snow with its many feet. "I tried," it said miserably. "I tried to help you."

"The next one won't miss," hissed the stranger. "Run away, Fa'dkin Chvet. And tell the council to mind its own bloody business."

The alien went squealing into a more distant dark.

Anxious but not panicked, Rory stumbled into a wall. Compared to his rapidly dropping body temperature, it felt warm. Warm? He thought sluggishly. Whatever it was, it ought to be cool to the touch, right? He shook some life back into his fingertips and explored it quickly. He felt the smooth grain of painted wood. It seemed to be sort of jutting out from another wall, which was quite cold and rough—stone. He reached in the other direction and came to a corner. It was a tall wall, but not a very long one. He stepped around it, keeping one hand on the wood. It was solid.

Not a wall. A box. He came across a rough bit, stopped, and felt it again.

"No," he said. He felt the jaws of disbelief close on the back of his neck. His fingers traced the rough shapes on the box. Not shapes. Letters. Rory rested his forehead on the warm surface. "It can't be here."

There was a rustle behind him. A snicking sound. A chemical smell like brimstone. Rory was blinded by orange light. When his vision cleared, a man was right behind him. He was very old. Easily in his nineties. He had a round face and a little beard. He leaned on a stick. His free arm was swaddled in bandages, and he grasped a lit match between fingers made weak by tremors. He was not twelve feet tall. He was not shadowed by anything supernatural. There was a dull intelligence in his eyes, like a piece of jewelry that hadn't been cleaned. But there was chilling darkness too. It was a face to fear. It was everything Rory didn't want to be; everything he didn't want in his life. Dramatic as it was, Rory could see why the Fa'dkin had named him shadowman.

"Go ahead," said the old man. "Look at it. It can't be here, but it is."

"I don't need to look at it," said Rory. He kept his fingers on the letters, but turned to put his back to the door. _Keep your heart still. Don't react until you know_. "Is my wife in here?"

The match went out. The old man struck another.

"What do you think?" said the stranger.

"I'm done thinking." The letters under his fingers: POLICE TELEPHONE.

It was here. But it couldn't be. Rory would have heard it phase in. And anyway, it's not like Amy would twiddle around in there while Rory froze in the dark.

It was fake. It _had_ to be. It was a genuine ripoff.

And it was absolutely, unquestionably real. POLICE TELEPHONE.

"My, my," said the shadowman, shaking his head in astonishment. "That may be the first clever thing you've ever said." The old man drew back his lips and showed a few rotten teeth.

On some planets, Rory knew, they called that a smile.


	8. A bad time

The TARDIS hummed through an anonymous unspace—the Doctor had put it wherever it went when it was going from one place to another. Amy, too, felt herself churning between worlds, unable to land. The Doctor hadn't said a word in ages and he was clearly out-of-sorts. The periscope screen showed a blueprint of the strange machine they'd encountered. The Doctor stalked back and forth like a spooked cat. He couldn't quite decide what to do with his hands. He could barely meet Amy's eyes. His expression was a new entry in Amy's mental catalog; she'd known him silly, thoughtful, tender, confident, serious, and even afraid, but _vulnerable_?

She hardly knew what to do. She could sort Rory out in a thousand subtle ways, but none that would do anything much for the Doctor. His loneliness had never been more obvious. After all, what could you say to him, really? _It's going to be all right? _He already knew whether or not things would be all right. That could be the problem. Any words of comfort might be tinged with a painful irony that would make things that much worse.

Sitting on the balcony stairs, watching a Doctor who was—again, and in some sense, always—a stranger to her, Amy missed Rory. How lucky she was to have someone she could talk with. Someone on her level. She wished her friend River was aboard, too. River would know just what to say. But her friends weren't here. It was just Amy and the Doctor.

It was an echo of those fine days when it was only the two of them, before Time balanced the cheque and she'd had to grow up again. Despite herself, she had a job to do. Being the Doctor's companion came with a responsibility no one could ignore: not Rory at his most bereft, not River, who might never come home, and certainly not Amelia Pond.

"Doctor," she said, with hardly a quaver in her voice. "What is that?"

He slowed in his pacing and crossed his arms over his chest. "Well," he said. He chewed a thumbnail. He gave a sort of loose laugh. "It's a bloody great Clockworks, isn't it?"

Amy squinted at the diagram. There was certainly something clockish about it, in an awful way. "What's a—"

"I shouldn't have brought you here," said the Doctor. He seemed to be deciding it as he spoke. He came over and sat beside her. "There are lot of things I haven't told you. A lot of things I can't tell you."

"No kidding," said Amy. "This isn't just any planet."

"No." He shook his head. "But it's a long story with a lot of very bad bits and no ending." Weariness seemed to settle on him again, and he rubbed his eyes sleepily. "You'll have to remind me, Amy. What have I told you about the Time War?"

"The Time War?"

His shoulders slumped. "That little, eh?" He got back to his feet. "Thought experiment!" The change in subject and energy level made Amy jump. "If you were going to fight me, how would you do it? Me and this TARDIS." He patted the control panel.

Amy scoffed. "I wouldn't."

Fire flashed in his eyes. "If you didn't have a _choice_. If it was fight me or die. Fight me or _everyone_ dies."

Amy inched back in her seat. Even though she knew she was being wound up, this violent turn frightened her. There was a part of him, she knew, that relished a battle, that craved a spectacle. To have that boundless and amoral energy directed at her—even in play—by someone she considered _family_ was disturbing. This wasn't like him.

He snapped his fingers. "Come on, Pond. _Think_. What weapon would you use?"

Forced to choose, she thought: _psychology_. She didn't say that, though. She didn't want to think that way, and anyway, the Doctor was looking for an answer. He stood just beside the periscope viewer, arms crossed, head pointed slightly toward the diagram.

Amy said, "Well, I guess I'd use that."

"You'd be smart," said the Doctor. "A Clockworks is a sort of tank for fighting TARDISes. See this bit here? It's called a Master Room." He pointed at a round room, outlined in white on the blueprint, and surrounded by slowly turning gears. It was the "pill" Amy had seen on the real one. At the Doctor's touch, it dropped and skittered through the Clockworks like a little bug. "You see, if you're going to land the TARDIS somewhere, you need to have a pretty good idea about where you're going to put it. I mean, you can be off by a few inches or minutes."

"Or years," Amy said. "Or, you know, continents."

"Yes, _alright," _the Doctor groused. "Most of the time it doesn't matter, but if you're trying to get into a tiny room, it really does. We can never land here because it's never at a fixed point in space or time. The pattern is random. And if you materialise inside the gears, that's it. Game over."

"But I thought we did that."

He grinned. "We didn't do anything. We tried and failed. Brilliantly. This isn't my first dance." He pointed at another part of the diagram. The treads. Under his fingertips, they turned. With the whole diagram in motion, Amy could see how each part subtly interacted with the others. "Put a Master Room on wheels and you've got the makings of a Clockworks."

"Okay," said Amy. "I think I get it. But why not just run away from it? How can it hurt us?"

"A dozen ways in a dozen days," said the Doctor. "It can be used as a trap. That's what they tried to do to us. Or a prison." Another command from the Doctor called up the Clockworks' knocking sound. The sound was very like the ticking of a large clock, but the beat was slightly off. It was a bit grim. "It's built from the same material as the TARDIS, so it's temporally displaced. It divides a few seconds against themselves in either direction, so if you did put a TARDIS inside it, you wouldn't be able to shift out. Of course, it's got weapons too." He tapped the screen. "Anything that can slice time that way could eat a TARDIS alive. It could shred us, if we held still long enough. And believe me, during the Time War there was plenty going on to keep your attention."

"Did the... Daleks make them?"

The Doctor shook his head sadly. "We did. The Time Lords."

"_Why?_" Amy's stomach churned.

"Why make the atom bomb? Why make a gun or an arrow or a hatchet? We were different from you in so many ways, Amy. But in the basics, we were the same. It was a bad time. By the end of the war, we were building a lot worse than Clockworks."

Amy had started asking questions in order to draw him out of his silence, then because she was curious, then because she couldn't help herself. Her strategy seemed to work. The Doctor was a teacher at heart; explaining things seemed to ground him. He stood a little taller and looked a little more focused, more like the Doctor she knew. It did her good to see it. But at the same time, his words seemed to awaken something inside her. She found it all too easy to imagine: a TARDIS vaporising to dust before her eyes, a dozen Clockworks inching across a scorched plain, a cracked dome. There were battles that blazed beyond their own timelines and memories that died like nightmares, noise so loud it had a fearsome spiritual quality—ticking. And then, rising above it all, a sense of guilt and despair so profound it was like being struck suddenly blind.

She was on her feet and yelling, tears running down her face. "Stop it! Oh, Doctor, _please_."

In a blink, it was over, no more than a tender spot in her heart. The Doctor had a hand on her arm, and he was looking in her eyes. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—"

"No," Amy said, pushing him gently away. "It's fine. It's—um." She was trembling. "I didn't know. It's fine. I'm all right. I didn't know." She got control of herself by inches. It seemed like there was too much air in the room. She couldn't breathe enough. She put a hand to her chest. "Th-that was the Time War?"

The Doctor didn't say anything.

"All right," Amy repeated. "Why is it here? The Clockworks. Is it after us?"

"Us," the Doctor echoed. He smiled, a bit shakily, and shook his head. "No. Not _us_. I eat Clockworks for breakfast. Did you see how fast we got out of there?" A tiny glimmer of pride showed on his face.

"So, what? It's tied up with the Fa'dkin somehow, right? And this Cull thing."

"Yes," said the Doctor carefully. It was clear from his expression that he understood exactly how. He sighed. "I don't see why you shouldn't know. You've seen a little of what the war was like. More than I intended."

Amy nodded. It was still painful.

"It was like that for a long time, and when it was finally over, I was—wounded. More than that. I was barely alive. I couldn't go... to Earth. Not then. It was still dangerous. And I wasn't thinking clearly. I made it to Chvet. I had, not friends, but a few allies here." The details came out in tiny pieces, like he wasn't quite sure which order to put them in. "Now, when something really dreadful happens to you, you can get stuck. You don't ever really forget what it was like. Do you know what I mean?"

She thought of the times when she'd almost lost Rory. "Yeah."

"I was here for about a year," said the Doctor. "Maybe a bit more. But in a sense—in a very _real_ sense, Amy—I'm still here. It was a very long time ago. I'm a different person. But there's a part of me that never left this place. That _can't_."

Amy took a step back and gripped her temples. Her heart sank. "There's another Doctor here."

"It has its conveniences. It's one of the only places in the universe where I can go and be sure of finding myself. And I leave things here. It's a bit like a bank."

"Wait," said Amy, incredulous. "You're using your own worst memory as a safety-deposit box?"

The Doctor shrugged. "I look in on myself every now and then and make sure I'm doing all right."

"You do know that's totally screwed up."

"On balance," said the Doctor, "I think it's working out okay."

"Except now there's a giant evil time-tank out there, and we have to fight it—and win—so we can save Rory, the Fa'dkin, and a past version of you that can't defend himself."

"Yes," said the Doctor. "Except for that."


	9. Lightbox

"It's not the TARDIS," said the old man. "Here—turn round and have a look at her."

It had been a long time since Rory had let someone he didn't trust get behind him. He pivoted and stepped away in a practised movement that kept both the bright-eyed stranger and the box in his visual field. The man raised his eyebrows, peering at Rory with interest, but his thin lips also quirked with ridicule. He nodded at the box, and Rory looked.

He squinted.

After a long while, Rory said, "What's the matter with it? It's not invisible, but..." He shook his head. It _was_ a police box. Rory was certain of that. And if it was a police box, it _had _to be the TARDIS. Anything else was just too ridiculous. Yet Rory felt uncertain. What he had was an intellectual conviction, not an instinctive one. The match in the old man's hands gave weak and watery light, and it seemed to shroud the thing in darkness—even the parts that should be easy to see. At the same time, it almost glowed. How could something glow _and_ be lost in shadow? He blinked again, and it was like the box wasn't there at all, except as a memory of a glimmer. It made his eyes water to look at it, but it was difficult to look away.

"There's something wrong with the light," Rory decided. "Haven't you got anything better?"

"Blimey, but you're a hard man to impress." The stranger dropped the match into the snow.

Lost in darkness again, Rory spread his feet so he was well-balanced. He kept his arms at his sides and his fingers loosely curled.

"You're not a bit frightened," The voice was closer now. He sounded so weary. Like he might nod off at any moment. He was standing so close that Rory could feel the heat off him. Running a bit of a fever, maybe. Rory didn't move or back down.

"_Good for you! _But you ought to watch that cool attitude. It's dangerous in a place like this." The old man stepped away. There was a crunch and a slap. Moments later, light almost blinded Rory. It was faintly pink, and once he blinked the last hour of blindness out of his eyes, it was actually quite dim. The old man stood several feet away, in silhouette. For several feet around him, the wall glowed like an Easter egg, shot through with veins of pink neon. The old man took a few steps and slapped another part of the wall with his hand. It lit up blue, like sunlight through the sea. "They weren't mining for gold down here. The whole place is _brimming_ with lumenite." He gave another wall a good hard strike with his cane, and it came up brilliant green, with little fingers of light creeping toward the low arched ceiling. "But that's not the only magic trick in this old tomb. Look again." He pointed with his stick.

Two feet away from Rory stood half of a TARDIS. Not a police box sliced in half, but a TARDIS built only of outline and light. As if it had faded halfway into the world and simply—stopped. Forgetting his own safety for a moment, Rory stepped toward it and spread his hand on the door. It felt solid, but _dead_, like plastic. He dropped his hand and tried to shake the feeling out of his fingers. He had no desire to try and open the door. It wouldn't work, anyway. There was no lock for Rory's key.

The old man had both hands folded over the bend of his cane. "You know what it's supposed to be," he said. "I can see it in your face. You're right about it, by the way. It's broken. It's going to die." He spoke without emotion, but Rory knew. There was only one person the old man could be, and if the Doctor was capable of grieving anything, it was the TARDIS.

"It can't." Rory spoke before he realised what he was saying. He clamped his mouth shut, but it was already too late. There were probably all sorts of important rules about the past, and the future, and talking about it. Rory could only hope that he hadn't screwed Everything up.

"It _can't_," the other mocked. "'It's simply _not_ _possible._'" He rolled his eyes. His expression was sour. "Why would you say something like that? Because you _think_ you've traveled around in it with the Doctor and your wife? Oh, don't make that face. Of course I've guessed who you are. I'm very clever." The man wiped his mouth with his bandaged hand. "And you should believe me when I tell you she's dying. There's no way back. It's just a matter of time."

"But Doctor," Rory began.

"Please," said the old man. "I'm no more a Doctor than that's a TARDIS." He tutted and seemed to take some pity on Rory. "The Fa'dkin call me a teacher. You might as well." He looked the younger man up and down. He seemed disappointed. "And what does everybody call you?"

"I thought you knew," said Rory.

"Don't be dull. I'm clever, not psychic."

"Rory," said Rory.

"Good. You're in terrific danger, Rory. The end is nigh, and so on." He came over and clapped Rory on the shoulder. "Try to look more concerned."

"You know," Rory said, "after the first couple of times, that just doesn't hit like it used to."

The teacher nodded. It wasn't an _I-agree _nod. It was a _fine-have-your-own-delusions_ nod. It made Rory a bit angry. There was a lot that Rory didn't understand, and a few things at which he refused to even guess, but like this 'teacher,' he had the general outline of things. Obviously the man would get better, and so would the TARDIS, because the future had already happened. Rory was living it right now.

The teacher seemed to follow his train of thought. "You're wrong," he said. "You think that everything's going to be fine. But _this—_right now—_this_ is the present." He stomped on the ground to make his point. "And just because things have been going along one track," —he drew a line in the snow with his cane— "Doesn't mean they can't run down another." He drew another branch off the line. "By the way, if you're depending on me to make the right decisions, you're in a spot of trouble, because I'm not feeling very confident these days." He kicked snow over both the paths.

Rory's stomach twisted. Was it possible? Could Amy and the future Doctor just... wink out of Time at any moment? Of course not. If the TARDIS had never been here, then how could Rory be here? Unless he could wink out of existence at any moment too.

The teacher gave him a thin-lipped smile.

No. Rory _refused_. If his future was one of a number of possible paths, then he would simply have to make sure that he stayed on the right one. He had to make sure that there was a gap in the future that only Amy's Doctor and TARDIS could fill. And he had to make _this_ Doctor believe that such a future was possible, desirable, maybe even inevitable.

So, no pressure, then.

The teacher was looking at him curiously. "Remind me of what they call you again."

That phrase again. What they _call_ you. "Rory Williams."

"Mm," said the teacher. "That Fa'dkin that was with you. Did you try to talk to him?"

"Mostly he talked to me."

"Oh yes? That's very interesting. What sorts of things did he say?" He began backing away from Rory, hefting his walking stick. Rory felt threatened, but for only a moment. The teacher wasn't afraid of _him. _On the contrary; the old man turned and stepped in front of Rory, looking out at the darkness beyond. He was suddenly sure-footed, and the stick he held was less support than weapon.

"You can start anytime you like," the teacher prodded. He glanced at Rory over his shoulder.

"He said I was stupid."

The teacher stepped backwards, forcing Rory back. "Anything else?"

"He showed me how to climb down the shaft. So I wouldn't fall. Um. He told me I needed to move because you were coming."

"Me. You're sure." They were backing up against the half-TARDIS. The teacher stood in front of Rory, but he couldn't help but try to protect his beloved ship too. Even if it was dying. Maybe especially then. The space that the were in was still warmly lit by multicoloured lights. Rory couldn't see or hear anything beyond. That made the teacher's alarm seem even more worrying.

Rory said, "He called you the Shadowman."

"Yahtzee," said the teacher. "They don't call me that. They don't always like me very well, but they're not afraid of me."

Rory didn't waste any time arguing. He'd used up all his _that's-impossibles_ for the day. "What's a Shadowman, then?"

"I'm sure we'll find out soon enough." His shoulders sagged. Whatever he was worried about did not appear, so he put the stick back on the ground and leaned on it.

"I just wanted to go away," the teacher said to himself. "I just wanted to be left in peace until the end. But I don't even get _that_, do I?" The slightest hint of the Doctor's powerful anger rose in his voice. " You know if you go up on the surface right now you'll find a bloody great..." He trailed off. "Well, it hardly matters anymore. But we ought to take your new friend's advice. I can't stand this place anyway." He walked away, banging the walls into brightness at intervals.

Rory hesitated.

"You shouldn't wait for him," the teacher called back. "He'd never land here."

Of course not, Rory thought. Nevertheless, he didn't want to leave right away. First of all, he had to figure out a way to fix the half-TARDIS, to bring it all the way into this reality. That would be a lot harder if they left it. Second, he needed to fix the half-Doctor. The Doctor had always perked up a bit when he had something to fight.

If anything was going to come and get them—Shadows or what-have-you—it would come here. This damaged TARDIS was probably sending off all sorts of weird energy that would attract the kind of things that would _force_ the Doctor to take an interest.

Rory didn't have a death wish. He had no desire to see or fight another evil alien. But he had a very powerful _life_ wish, and when you traveled with the Doctor, these things sometimes came into conflict. You just had to make your decisions and carry on. He stuck his hands in his pockets. His fingers brushed all the little things a man keeps in his coat. Coins from Altan, receipts from that dodgy space bar in Delmax, a bit of drywall from Stormcage. His fingers closed around the last of these.

Hadn't it traveled in time and space too? Couldn't it attract all manner of nasty things?

"Teacher," he said, "wait for me."

As he walked he dropped the chalky square. Then he reached for a coin.

Come and find us, he thought. Come make the Doctor who he needs to be.


	10. Worthy opponent

Time phased into the TARDIS; the TARDIS phased into time; the TARDIS phased into itself; all of these were adequate but completely inaccurate descriptions of what happened when the TARDIS appeared back in reality, in nearly the same position it had been before, but slightly higher in the air. The knocking sound continued without missing a beat, except this time it was real.

The window looked out over the Clockworks again. The TARDIS whirled around it, mimicking the Master Room by never holding still long enough to be caught.

Amy was no longer frightened by it. The Doctor had taught her long ago that knowledge was the enemy of fear; the more you knew about something the more banal it seemed. She glared at the great machine as if it could see her—and who said it couldn't? "Okay. How do we stop it?"

"Stop it? We don't."

"But you said you could destroy it."

The TARDIS screamed. That was the only word for it. "Oh, no you don't," the Doctor muttered. He shifted it back out of time, then back in. "What? Yes, of course I could destroy it. But that wouldn't help us very much because—_whoo—"_ Amy felt tingly. The Doctor cocked an eyebrow, almost smiling at the sensation. He pulled a lever the ship jolted in and out of the world again. "_Sorry_. Hold that thought, Amy." He stepped away, stopped, and turned around. "If anything happens, just toggle the wobbly lever."

He hopped across the floor and slid down the bannister, sonic screwdriver already in his hand. He was underneath the scaffolding now. It was all dangling wires and loose connections down there. He reached up and pulled down two mismatched cables. He stripped them with his teeth, and soldered them with the screwdriver. Green sparks exploded at the connection.

"What are you doing?" Amy called.

"Algebra!"

The tingling came back. It was a subtle inward pull that made the hair on Amy's arms stand on end. It didn't make her feel at all unwell, but it was not a welcome feeling either. Her hand shot out and she pulled a lever with a shiny black handle. The terrible knocking sound cut off, replaced by a rousing instrumental version of "God Save the Queen." But the pulling became even more intense. Like a massive hand was simultaneously crushing and stretching every part of her.

The Doctor yelled something from below.

"What?"

His voice was barely audible. He gestured urgently through the glass floor at a completely different part of the TARDIS. "The _wobbly _lever! The _wobbly_ one!"

Amy's body felt too heavy and too light. Her head was like a balloon and her arms were lead weights. She used bits of the TARDIS control panel to drag herself toward the correct lever. With her last bit of energy she pulled it down. It was indeed wobbly. It had a loose screw or a broken belt. It came off in her hand. But the tingling-floating-crushing feeling disappeared. There was another shower of sparks from the room below. Amy caught her breath—

Amy caught her breath—

Amy caught her breath—

She was in a hall of mirrors. There was another Amy and another TARDIS control room inches away from her on either side. And beside them, others. She turned and looked behind her. Another Amy, another TARDIS. And another, and another. This wasn't double vision. It was _infinite_ vision. She looked down at the lever in her hand.

The Doctor came up behind her. There were a million of him too, reflected against each other. He looked completely unruffled, and Amy hated him just a little teeny bit. "Oh, calm down. This was me, not you." His voice echoed and harmonized, sounding much bigger than it usually did. Followed at every step by multiple versions of himself, the Doctor took the lever from Amy's hand and tried to fit them back into the empty space. When that didn't work, he shrugged and left the lever on the control panel.

"Algebra," he said. "When you're working against something that divides time against itself, how do you win? Multiplication. Amy, meet yourself a few milliseconds from now. And a few milliseconds ago. How lovely is _that_. Bite me, Clockworks." He grinned. The control room was suddenly full of teeth. "Or rather, _don't_."

"Doctor," said Amy. She was very disoriented. The Doctor patted her hand.

"Stasis," said the Doctor. "We're simplifying the equation. What you felt a minute ago was the beginning of the TARDIS flying apart. We're safe now—for a while. Can you believe that it took almost the entire war to work this out? I did it with graph paper and a compass."

His voice had the tiniest echo. Also a bit of a buzz, which Amy thought was a—what—an echo that came before someone spoke. A pre-echo.

"Now, X equals what? That's our dilemma, Amy: What do Gorgorans and that—" The many Doctors pointed at the window. "Have in common?"

Amy looked out the window. Copies of the ice plains of Chvet were stacked on each other like an infinitely large deck of cards. But there was only one Clockworks, parked in the middle, churning and shaking. Smoke rose from its gears, which would roll forwards, then back, as if unsure of where to go. "They've both attacked us."

"Good. Right. _And_ there's something else." He directed the TARDIS toward the Clockworks. "A lot of other things, in fact. Making _me_ stay here. Making me fight an enemy I defeated a long time ago, an enemy that killed so many of my..." He seemed to lose the thread for a moment, but he grabbed back on with strength. "That's clever. That takes brains. And the Gorgorans forcing me into hom sleep: well, that was just vicious. I'm still not right."

Amy had trouble believing that anything could seriously hurt him. She didn't say anything though. Saying something wasn't the point. All that mattered right now was that she was there to listen.

"No," said the Doctor softly. "We'll slow it down for a while, but we're not going to destroy it. Not yet."

Infinite Doctors walked to infinite periscope viewers. The real image was just like the blueprint: same position, same parts. Except this Master Room was stuck, suspended in an equation of its own devising. He touched it. "The Gorgorans and this Clockworks share a puppet master. Pulling my strings. We can cut them, easily, but that's not a permanent solution." He spread his palm on the screen. At this distance, it completely covered the windowless, wooden room. "And you know how I feel about loose ends."

He focused on her. She was on the other side of the control panel, heart in her throat, afraid to move. "This isn't a fight anymore." There was a look in his eyes that Amy had never seen before, and she knew that she was seeing him as he had once been. Before he came home to Earth; before he had lost everything; long before he had met Amy and Rory and all the other people who saved from himself. Amy was frightened of him, and sorry for him.

"I'm going to get into that room, and I'm going to find out who's in charge." The multiplied Doctors didn't disappear, but Amy's world shrunk so that all she could see was _her_ Doctor, right now, his voice absolutely cold and clear. "And whatever it costs _me, _I will repay with interest."

He beckoned. "Come and stand with me, Pond," he said. He pushed a few buttons, and the wooden room loomed large in the viewer. "We're going to war."


	11. Unspoken

Rory dropped a bit of pocket lint on the path behind them. He was running out of clues, which was unfortunate, because he didn't _have_ a clue about what to do next, except wait for the things with teeth or the Cull or what-have-you to come and get them.

He was having problems managing this relationship.

When Rory was studying nursing, one of the first things he learned was never to contradict a doctor in the performance of his duties. Most of the time, this did not present a challenge. Almost all the doctors Rory had known were competent enough, and truly odious ones were... routed around. At the hospital, there was a whole system for minimising mistakes, or, if that was impossible, making them disappear. A really _good_ nurse could keep an entire wing ticking over like a Swiss watch, without upsetting any physician's sense of authority. It was just fancy footwork.

Rory used similar tactics on the Doctor. Rory never put his foot down on any issue. Instead, things that needed to happen just sort of _happened_. Like leaving the second moon of Krensk. They'd had no adventures that time. No hanging about, no falling in dark holes. It was just: land, take one peek out the door, and hey-what-happened-to-Krensk. When Rory didn't feel like fighting—which was always—he could be incredibly difficult to pin down.

None of this would be news to the real Doctor. The two of them had a deep understanding. As long as that understanding held, everything was All Right, and since any other state of affairs would be hurtful to Amy, the understanding would always hold. It was absolutely rock-solid. This had all been quietly sorted about fifteen seconds after Rory had first set foot on the TARDIS.

You could be jolly mates with almost anyone, under such circumstances.

Rory's current problem was that the boat had been upset. "The teacher" might someday be the Doctor, but all of the hard work Rory had put into managing him was yet to pay off. All of the safe topics—Amy, the TARDIS, warnings and instructions—were off limits, since they concerned some complicated and specific revelations about the future. Furthermore, all the risky topics—the past, the future, and philosophies and approaches about same—were suddenly in play, if Rory was supposed to make this ill, alarming old man into the Doctor.

Added to the soup were Rory's, for lack of a better word, _medical _instincts. A man in such a state as this old teacher was to be treated gently. Rory's vision for this man's immediate future included a bowl of thin soup and an early lights-out. He had a lot of trouble reconciling that with his view of the _real_ Doctor, whose immediate future usually included lizards, crash-landings, River Song, or some combination of the above.

For all that, the teacher moved like something was right on their heels. He barely leaned on his cane, but used it to tag the walls. In some places it was almost like looking into a skylight. In others, the man's harsh blows would only kindle a ribbon of light. No matter what, he never left them in complete darkness. As they moved, anger seemed to _radiate_ off him, growing with each step and giving him strength beyond his fragile health. He was damn fast with that stick, Rory observed, and Rory had to step carefully to avoid being smacked.

The long and short of it: there was silence.

Rory tried to fill it by cajoling his one college psychology class out of the recesses of his memory. He had not gone in for Mental Health. Hadn't seen a future in it. But a bit had stuck out, and that had been the bit about post-traumatic stress disorder. Not that he had ever suffered it personally—though he was currently evaluating it as an option—but it had helped him understand Amy. Even before Time had gone weird on him, Rory had known about people who got stuck on the past. For example, meeting the Doctor as a little child, then getting promptly abandoned by him. That sort of thing was difficult to get over all at once. You had to process it. It kept coming back at you in different ways.

Rory chewed his lip. It didn't quite fit. Yeah, sure, the Doctor was a little bit cracked, but he hadn't been any worse lately. They hadn't done anything traum—ahem, _unusually_ traumatic. A bit of a hangover from the business at Stormcage, maybe, but that was mostly physical; even Rory had some bumps and bruises from that. It was no worse than anything else. _So why had they come here?_

"Ha," muttered the teacher. The stick whipped out and slammed into the wall, conjuring red light. "That's what _I _want to know."

The stick was in front of Rory like a barrier. "What?"

"What's that?" said the teacher, his own private thoughts interrupted. "Oh, don't mind me. Carry on." He gave Rory a dark stare and inclined his head in a strange sort of bow. He pulled the stick away and kept walking, forcing Rory to jog to keep up.

"Where are we going?" said Rory, because he had to say something.

"Some place with a hell of a lot of noise."

"Noise?"

"Oh yes," said the teacher. "Some rushing, sort of thing, lots of crashing, maybe some screaming. Like the Fortress of Solitude." He pointed ahead of them. "It's just up there."

"The Fortress of Solitude didn't have screaming."

"Oh, well, there you are," said the teacher.

In fact there was a soft rushing noise coming up on them, which Rory recognised as the icefalls. Apparently they went all the way through the cave system. He felt a light draft and wished he'd worn a heavier coat. The sound reminded him of the picnic they'd had just a few hours ago. It seemed like a different, faraway time, and Rory supposed it was. Technically, it was still in the future. If he waited long enough, would he catch up with himself?

"I sincerely doubt it," said the teacher.

Rory came up short again. He felt a bit dizzy. He put a hand on the cool wall. "I didn't say anything out loud."

"No," said the Doctor, but in such a way that Rory couldn't tell if it was a statement or a question.

Nevertheless, all the hairs went up on Rory's neck. _"You can hear what I'm thinking_?"

"There it is," said the teacher. Sensing that Rory wasn't going to be getting much further for a moment, he turned and leaned heavily against the wall. He caught his breath. "That was sort of like a scream."

Rory was stunned. He was, for a moment, silent on every level.

"Don't look at me like it's _my_ fault," said the old man. "You're the one putting all the effort in. I don't care either way."

Rory glowered. He still hadn't got his mind around it.

"Look," said the teacher, a bit impatiently. "When I said noise, I meant it. The falls are very loud and in a place like this, they _echo_. You couldn't speak in here if you wanted to and anyway, _the Fa'dkin Chvet can't talk. _So you tell me, 'Rory': when was the last time you actually spoke? Because by my count it was more than an hour ago. _Keep_ walking." The teacher pushed himself off the wall and stalked away.

"But I can hear just fine," said Rory. It was normal conversation, wasn't it? He tried to think of it in a different way and couldn't. It was just _talking_. He was badly frightened, but he followed. He didn't want to be left alone with himself. "I'm _fine_."

"Yes," said the teacher. "Like I said before: it's very interesting."

They stepped into a chamber. Rory felt the room open up around them. Then the teacher's arm shot out and the stick hit the wall.

It was lightning. If this was a mine, they'd hit the motherlode. White light filled the room, traveling from the old man's cane outward and upward, until the whole room filled was filled with a brilliant glow. On the far side of the chamber the icefall crashed. The fall Rory had seen up above was _tiny_ compared to this.

"Hundred decibels in here," said the teacher, in a perfectly normal tone of voice. "Like a damn jet engine. But here we are."

Between the young man, the teacher and the falls were a huge gathering of Fa'dkin. More poured in from various hallways, or drifted from high above. There was no way for Rory to recognise his "friend" from before—to him, they all looked more or less the same. But he could hear their silent fear and anger, their sense of _violation_, and he knew that he was in serious trouble.

The end was nigh, and so on.

"You have about thirty seconds to explain yourself," said the teacher. His voice was calm and pleasant. _Confident_, was the word. This was the voice of a man who had the drop on a deadly enemy. And Rory, to his profound and lasting terror, couldn't even remember if the teacher was speaking _out loud_. "Who are you? _What_ are you? Why did the future Doctor bring you here? Because I'll tell you something: it hasn't been that long since the war. Not for _us_. And we don't tolerate your kind around here."

"M-my _kind_. But I'm... I'm just..." Rory backed up until he hit a wall.

_Shadowman, he'll find us. Shadowman, I warned you_.

Well, yes, Rory thought desperately. But it didn't mean it that way. I'm mean, _I'm_ not the...

"Yeah, he did mean it that way," said the teacher. "There is a shadow following you. I can see it. And if you think you can come here just because I'm dying—if you think you can _outsmart_ me—then you are in for a bad surprise."

"Please," said Rory. He held up a hand. "_Listen_ to me."

High above their heads, even louder than the falls, there was a horrible knocking sound. _Something at the door._

Before Rory could say another word, the ceiling fell in.


	12. Remnant

The reflections collapsed into one: Amy and the Doctor, standing at the door of the TARDIS. After the distinctive hum of the timeship faded, silence collected around them. The air had changed; they were no longer churning through space, but indoors.

"It's out there," said Amy. "The Clockworks."

"Oh _yes,"_ said the Doctor, a mad light in his eyes. He lifted the sonic screwdriver and nodded to Amy. She threw the latch and they ran out.

The Doctor waved his screwdriver in a wide arc. "Surprise!" he said, grinning. "That's right, lads, it's me. _Come on if you think you're hard enough_!"

Amy crossed her arms.

It took a moment for the Doctor to unscrew his face from what Amy privately thought of as his No. 1. Glare. They were in a large, nearly empty storeroom. It was egg-shaped. There was a bit of dust, and a few boxes on the far end. It smelled slightly of woodsmoke. Cold light came down from bulbs in cages, illuminating little particles of dust. There were no enemies in sight. It was just Amy and the Doctor.

The Doctor coughed and adjusted his tie. "Just getting into form." He lowered the sonic.

Despite the high tension, or perhaps because of it, Amy tittered.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Come on."

"What was your plan there, anyway?" said Amy. "Were you going to assemble them to death?"

"We're not safe yet." He strode toward a door, on the blunt end of the egg.

As Amy followed, the ground shook underneath them, and the knocking started again. The humor drained from the moment. She drew closer to her friend.

"Are they doing that?" said Amy.

"It's probably automatic," said the Doctor. He bent over the door with the sonic. It had no effect. He rattled the door, which was locked. "When we did the math earlier we interrupted it. We didn't shut it down." He tutted. "_Wood_. We really did very well when we built these." He put the screwdriver away and pulled a large wrench. He flipped it so he was holding the narrow end, then brought it down hard on the knob. The wood cracked. Two more blows and the door was loose. He handed the wrench to Amy and muttered, "Don't lose that."

They emerged in a narrow anteroom. It was too short to be a hallway. There was a ladder dipping down in the middle of it. The Doctor was up it like a child on a climbing fame. He shouldered open the trapdoor at the top, stuck his head through, and whispered down. "All right so far. _Quietly_, Amy."

Amy followed him up. The Doctor extended a hand and helped her up the last few bars. He guided her out of the way and shut the trapdoor behind them.

The Master Room really was very large. Amy had the sense of standing in a converted warehouse. The ceilings were high and curved at the top. There were many hallways and walls, but they all had a flimsy, cheap-furniture quality, made even more obvious by the fine construction of the original structure. Despite the constant sense of motion, the floor underneath them was solid as a ship's deck.

Amy was troubled and frightful, without quite knowing why.

"Doctor," she said. "What you said before. About this being a prison."

The Doctor nodded. He barely noticed her. He was trying to figure out how two people, armed only with hand tools, were going to clear a dozen tiny little rooms with closed doors, without alerting an enemy that could be anything from, well, _the Master, _to Gorgorans, to the Nestene Consciousness.

"We can't go back, can we?"

"What? No. Not by shifting out. We've burned our bridges behind us." He focused on Amy and gave her an approximation of a comforting smile.

"Oh. Good."

"Here's what we're going to do," he whispered. "I'm going to race you to the end of this hall. By the time we get there, I want every single one of these doors open." He ticked off the rules on his fingers. "You open the door. If it's locked, break it. Look inside. Do it fast, but _look_, Amy. Make sure you get behind the door and along the near wall. We don't want any surprises. If you get in any kind of trouble, you give a good loud scream. I'll come and get you. Other than that, we're _running for our lives _now. If we can clear all these rooms in thirty seconds, I'll be a happy man. Questions."

"Why?"

They both got keyed up to run.

"Best of chance of survival with these odds," said the Doctor.

"No, I mean, why are we here _at all_."

"Any other questions," said the Doctor patiently.

Amy gave the Doctor a searching look and shook her head. She got her wrench balanced in her hand.

"_Go_." He gave her a shove.

The Doctor hadn't said anything about being quiet, and he seemed to be making an almighty ruckus, so Amy threw herself at the nearest door on her side. She slammed the knob twice with the wrench and kicked open the door. She slammed it all the way open so it hit the wall—no chance of someone hiding behind it. Stuck her head and looked. There was nothing. It was a cheap office, poorly lit, with a little holographic computer on the desk and a chair bolted to the floor. She looked under the desk and along the far wall. Nothing.

She went to the next room. Broke the knob and rushed in, the heavy wrench high over her head.

Clear. It was a kitchen.

After that it went like gangbusters. She ran hard, cleared each room, went down a side corridor and back up the other end. By the time she met the Doctor at the other end, her hand was aching and she was breathless, with that slightly hungover feeling that came from using a lot of adrenalin for no reason. All the rooms had been empty. In fact there had been little sign of habitation. From the Doctor's expression, he hadn't found anything either. It was bizarre.

"I don't like this," Amy said.

The Doctor nodded. "They've got to be here."

"So why haven't they come out to get us?" Amy finished.

"Maybe they're frightened."

"Of us?"

"Of me."

Behind them, doors creaked on ruined hinges, and there was the sound of—emptiness. They stood at one last door, this being the older part of the Clockworks, and not the flimsy maze they'd just slammed their way though. Unlike the rest of the rooms, this door had an iris opening. There would be no beating it open. The Doctor rested his hand on it for a moment, then felt his way around the sides until he found a panel that flipped open.

There was a small pane of glass underneath it. Not a window. A scanner. The Doctor looked at it for a long time.

"Are you ready, Amy?" he said. No whispering now. They'd torn the whole tank open; it's not like voices would make much of a difference.

The enemy had to be in there. Frightened and hiding, or armed and ready for their last stand. Amy took a few steps away from the door. _Come on, if you think you're hard enough._ Amy did.

The Doctor held his hand over the scanner. "All right, old thing. Let's see how far from home we really are." He pressed his palm to the lock.

At first, there was no reaction. The pause was long enough for Amy to let go of some of her fear. Then she heard a _chunk_, deep in the walls. The iris began to open, wooden triangles folding and drawing back, and Amy took all her fear back up again in a gasp. The Doctor came to stand beside her. There was no question of hiding or defending themselves; there was no cover to take.

The ancient door opened wide.

The Doctor staggered backwards.

Amy put a hand to her mouth and looked away. "Oh, God."

###

"What does this mean?"

The room was a control panel, half-moon shaped. The controls were all alive and blinking. The seat Amy sat in was still warm from someone else's body. A jerry-rigged wall of screens showed different views: the snowy plains and mountains outside; another set of those beer-keg microwave scanner things, swirling through the air and firing in turns; the TARDIS in the storage room. This latter one showed different views, like a security camera. Control room, the rooms the Doctor and Amy had cleared with such speed, even the control room itself. On the screen the Doctor paced like a wild animal in a cage. Amy pivoted to look at him.

"Doctor?"

Except for the Doctor and Amy, the Clockworks' control room was empty. There was nobody at the wheel. But _someone_ had been here, and not long ago. Amy could feel it. Where could they have gone? What were they doing here in the first place? Amy closed her eyes in frustration. This was almost worse than being attacked. If someone struck at you, you could _do_ something.

"I don't know," said the Doctor. "It's..." He swallowed. "_None of this was supposed to be here_. Do you understand? I never wanted..." He threw up his hands. "I mean, the Cull, sure, you have to watch out for that sort of thing, but in the end it's a just a religious... people aren't _involved_ it. It doesn't attract this kind of attention. _That's why I came here_. And now..." He nearly tripped over a little wastebasket, then kicked it across the floor, to the accompaniment of a great crescendo of metallic noise.

Amy felt like she was missing all the important bits of this monologue. This needed gentle handling. "Forget why you came here," she said. "Why did you come back? How could they even know you were coming? Whoever they are."

"I always come back," he said bitterly.

"All right," said Amy. She thought hard, and came up with an answer. It wasn't, as it went, a good answer. It wasn't even a true answer. But it was an answer that settled some questions and therefore, ought to be voiced. "How about this: no one was ever here."

"What do you mean, no one was here? Of course they were here. They attacked us. They took over the Cull."

"Not for ages, I mean. You said this was from the Time War? Maybe it still is. Maybe this is just a remnant, running on autopilot, waiting..."

_The seat had still been warm_. Amy squirmed.

"Are you stu—" The Doctor stopped himself. He changed directions right in front of her. She saw it in his haggard face. He didn't buy it; but he got the general outlines, and bought into that. "Right. Yeah. I'm sure you're right." He stepped up next to her and leaned on the panel, putting almost all his weight on his hands. He took a deep breath, settling in to the path he'd chosen. "Just an old relic. The war was a long time ago. But still never quite over."

"Except when it is," said Amy firmly. She got up and tried to forget all the contradictions and counter-arguments. "Let's go get Rory."

"Oh, _Rory,_" said the Doctor, suddenly remembering. He caught her arm. "We can't go out that way." He pulled her back to the pilot's chair. "Running on autopilot, right?" All at once, he seemed to gather himself up. He began hitting buttons and switches. "The TARDIS will never get out of here. It's a timelock. Even I can't switch it off from here. You'd have to rip the whole tank apart to get out. But there's life in this old girl yet."

The Clockworks began to churn. Amy found a seatbelt and clipped in.

"Funny thing, time," said the Doctor. He whirled a dial. "You start getting all _creative _with it, and before you know it you're shifting everything. Gravity, matter, heat." He winked. "Memory."

Outside, the air sizzled. On the viewscreen, the ice did not melt so much as _fry_. The Clockworks sunk slowly downward, as the movement of the Master Room they stood in became faster and more urgent. On the security screen, things tumbled and fell. The TARDIS slid across the storeroom.

The Doctor palmed a red button.

Amy white-knuckled the armrests.

The Clockworks fell through the ice.


	13. Long division

To Rory's lasting surprise, a giant machine fell through the top of the cavern and hit the ground, quite hard, on the far side of the icefall. The Fa'dkin Chvet scattered. A wall of snow engulfed Rory and the teacher. Never one to miss an opportune moment to disappear, Rory took a few deep breaths and plunged deeper into the sudden fog. If that wasn't the sound of the Doctor arriving—_his_ Doctor—then Rory would hang up his time-traveling shoes right now.

"Amy!" he called, extending a trembling hand. "I'm here."

As he got closer to the scene of the accident, the snow cleared. Just like that, the chamber was not a chamber anymore. It was a cavern. The mine was broken and partially collapsed. Exposed to the outside, the roar of the icefall became a whisper. The sudden absence of sound was the loudest thing Rory had heard in a long time. Light—real sunlight—poured in from a massive hole in the roof. _A cold and unfamiliar sky_. A blizzard of snow and ice fell to the ground around them.

The machine looked like an inside-out clock, or a reverse TARDIS. It twitched like a dying animal. Then, before Rory's unbelieving eyes, it began to shrink into itself. To begin with, it had nearly filled the cave. Then it was the size of a large house, and then a truck, and then a compact car, and then a toy car. Finally it was the size of a jellybean.

The Doctor picked it up and put it in his pocket. "Maths," he said. He looked a bit shaken. "Passed my A-levels with a trick like that. Hello again, Rory."

The TARDIS was perched on a new snowbank behind them. Amy sat on the ground, gripping armrests that were no longer there.

"And just what happened, there?" she said, shaking the tension out of her hands.

"Long division," said the Doctor. "There was a remainder."

"The time-tank shrank and all of a sudden we were _outside_ it," said Amy.

"Yes," said the Doctor. "Well done." He held out a hand.

"We couldn't have done that up on the surface?"

The Doctor reflected on this for a moment. "I suppose we could have."

Amy took his hand and let him pull her to her feet.

Rory said, "Um."

"Doing all right, are you?" said the Doctor.

"The—" Rory swallowed. "The—your friends the, uh, the Fa'dkin. I think they're angry. At me. I don't know why. And the Doctor—I mean, the other Doctor—he's got a buggy TARDIS, by the way, much worse than usual, it's just round the corner, you should go have a look at that—and also I've got telepathy now."

"Glad to hear it," said the Doctor, as if Rory had said, fine, thank you.

Amy said, "We killed an old time-tank full of enemies that weren't there."

"I hate this planet," said Rory.

"Me too," said the Doctor. "I'll just pop the TARDIS onto the other side of the riverbank, and we'll get out of here. How does that sound?"

Rory looked at the TARDIS. He did not intend for it to disappear again without him inside it. "If it's all the same to you," he said. "I'll just forge across." Truth be told, wading through a river of ice needles would be the sanest thing he'd done all day.

"It's not all the same to me," said the old teacher. "Or them."

The Doctor sank. It wasn't his face, or his shoulders—it was all of him. As if he'd suddenly taken up a great weight.

"We are," said Rory, "actually talking now. With voices."

Amy looked at him with a cocked eyebrow. She nodded.

"I can't tell the difference." Panic fluttered in Rory's heart.

"It'll be fine," said the Doctor, in a tone that brooked no argument.

That was the thing about the Doctor: Despite everything, when he said it would be fine, you believed him. Rory took a deep breath and got a grip.

The teacher glowered up at his younger, older self. "You should never have brought him here. You know how the Fa'dkin are. It was dangerous. It still is."

"Yes," said the Doctor. "It's against their creed. And you're right: we can't just leave things like this. I suppose we'll have to find some way to settle up."

Realization—combined with a grudging admiration—dawned across the teacher's drawn face. "Oh, that's _evil_. You knew from the beginning, you old fraud."

"I told you," said the Doctor, "I'm done with this place. I'm never coming back."

Rory looked at Amy, thinking, _What's going on_?

Amy shrugged. _We'll find out soon enough_.

But that was just ordinary marital telepathy and nothing to be concerned about at all.

The Doctor and Amy walked a long way down the riverbank until he found a narrow bridge caused by the damaged roof. Ice crystals were already pooling behind it. He stepped carefully across. Amy _jumped_ across, running up to kiss and fret over Rory.

"I don't understand what's happened," Rory whispered to her.

"Me either."

The Doctor broke in to their little group. "If you can manage to hold your expressions of scepticism and doubt, I'll tell you the truth about everything. I promise. Just wait a few more minutes."

"Are we still in trouble?" said Amy.

"Yes," said the Doctor. "Now please be quiet. Rory, I would appreciate it very much if you would show me where my TARDIS is. The old one, please."

They formed a party consisting of Amy, Rory and the two Doctors. Rory held Amy's hand like a lifeline. That and the Doctor's promise of the truth were the only things getting him through. Their pace was determined by the old teacher's hobble and Rory's twisted ankle, both of which seemed to get a lot worse all at once—Rory's, because he finally had time to think about it, and the teacher's, because his _everything_ had suddenly gotten worse at once. He coughed violently into his sleeve and leaned heavily on his walking stick. When he staggered, the Doctor took his elbow, looking for all the world like a young man helping his grandfather.

Still, it was not a long journey, and they soon came to the anteroom at the bottom of the shaft. Sunlight came through here, too. Cracks ran through the whole system. The Fa'dkin would probably have to shut it down, unless they had a clever way of traveling through a collapsed system. The half-TARDIS was there, and wasn't there. The sunlight caught it in funny ways.

"There's something wrong with the light," said Amy, squinting. "That _can't_ be the— "

"Shh," said the Doctor, touching her gently on the arm.

"Look," said Rory.

Behind them the Fa'dkin had gathered. It was a much calmer group than the one that had greeted Rory by the falls, though for all that, they were no less menacing. None of them were billowing in the air or running wildly. Their pace was steady and constant. Rory couldn't say why, but he felt like he was staring at a jury. He wondered who was on trial, and why.

The Doctor made them all turn until they were facing the crowd.

_You have been faithful allies for these long months_, said the Doctor. _I'm sorry for the trouble I've caused. I never meant to hurt the Fa'dkin. _

"What are they saying?" Amy whispered, right in Rory's ear. "Can you hear them?"

_There is no need to apologise for yourself, Doctor,_ said a voice from the crowd. Rory couldn't trace it, and began to wonder if it belonged to all of them at once._ We still owe a great debt to the Time Lords._

_But not great enough, _said the Doctor. _To cover him_.

Rory's eyes widened. They meant Rory.

"What?" said Amy.

Rory shook his head.

_That,_ said the Fa'dkin, _is not a matter of debts and responsibilities. It's morality and tabu. It is beyond us. It is the shadow and storm, and it must be settled. We are sorry._

_And the appropriate punishment? _said the Doctor.

_Death is traditional_, said the Fa'dkin together.

"You're hurting me," said Amy.

Rory loosened his grip on her hand. He didn't understand a lot of it, but what he got was very bad indeed.

"It's all right," said the Doctor, barely moving his lips.

"That's a matter of opinion," said the old teacher beside them. He shuddered, then lowered himself gently to the floor. He was trembling and wheezing. Rory didn't know the teacher that well, and hadn't liked him very much, but a patient was a patient, and the Doctor was the Doctor. Rory took a step forward.

The Doctor pushed him back. "Steady, Rory. Death is traditional."

"I'm sorry," said Amy, "did you say death?"

"But not mine," said the Doctor, almost smiling. "Stay back."

The Doctor crossed his arms. His eyes were on the half-TARDIS. Before them, the damaged machine melted away. But before Rory could even feel shock—the old TARDIS and the new TARDIS were the same, weren't they?—there was a shimmer of golden light, and the time machine flickered back into existence, as bright and blue and brilliant as ever.

The old teacher put a hand to his eyes. He didn't cover them or turn away. He only wanted to wipe away tears. "Oh," he said. "Oh. I never thought... I..."

"It doesn't end," said the Doctor. "It changes."

"You knew this whole time," said the teacher. His eyes were clear, and clever, and _young_. "You knew."

"Not until right now," the Doctor murmured. "Not really. Not for sure."

"It's time," said the teacher. "Thank you."

Gold light poured from the old man's hands. His face was bathed in light. He was gone.

Someone else lay where he had been. Not a young man, but a new one.

_Is this enough for you?_ said the Doctor to the gathered Fa'dkin.

There was no answer, which was all the answer the Doctor needed. He pulled Amy and Rory away, and the Fa'dkin Chvet made a path for them. Behind them, they heard the TARDIS phasing out. The Doctor didn't look back. He knew where he was going.

And that was the final battle of the Time War finished. He'd won.


	14. Rory's choice

"So the Doctor opened the door," said Amy. She put down two cards, one face-up and one face-down. "And there was nobody there."

"Okay," said Rory. He peeked over the edge of his cards, pondered, and traded the face-down card for one of the ones he held. He looked at Amy. She added two more face-up cards: a seven of stars and a nine of planets. "It's definitely weird, but—I win."

"No kidding," said Amy. "You got aliens and the old Doctor and the Clockworks coming through the ceiling."

"No," said Rory, showing her his cards. Ten of suns, thirteen of comets. He put them down next to the two face-up cards. He flipped the face-down card to reveal a red Lord Emperor. "I mean, I _win._"

It was a Big Bang. No chance of bringing a challenge, even with both Time Lords. Amy folded.

It had been a few hours since they'd left Chvet. Rory had an icepack on his ankle. He and Amy were on the floor of the TARDIS, playing a quick game of Aplan High Hand and waiting for the Doctor. He'd disappeared into the ship, telling them that he had "a few things to check."

Amy wondered aloud what he was up to. Unless it was making fish and chips, Rory didn't care. He was glad to be away from the Chvet planet, and he tried not to think about the rest of it, something he found much easier as they got further away. It wasn't that he had recovered from everything they'd seen and done. It simply got to a point where you had thought about it to distraction and talked it to death, and were no better off.

You _had_ to bounce back, or you got stuck, and had to go back and rescue yourself. And that was rubbish.

_ So, _Rory thought, _here we are._

The Doctor came down the stairs. Rory had to admit that he was looking better. He hadn't been unwell before, but his step was just a little lighter now. It was the way a traveling man might look if he had suddenly realised that, no, he hadn't left the stove on back home.

He sat down beside them.

"Well," said Amy, a bit coolly. "Should I deal you in?"

"Ponds," said the Doctor. "I owe you both apologies. But especially you, Rory. I've gotten you in a lot of trouble. More than you know. I was trying to protect you both, and all I did was put you in more danger."

Rory thought this was a good start.

"We have a serious problem," said the Doctor.

"Oh, one of those," said Amy. "Around here we call that 'Saturday.'"

Amy was a little bit upset about the whole thing.

The Doctor powered past her sarcasm. "Rory, through no fault of your own, there are a lot of people—including our Chvet friends—who have trouble seeing you for who you are. It's because of what happened at the Pandorica."

"But that never really happened," said Amy. "We wiped it out."

"Yes and no," said the Doctor. He rocked his hand from side to side in a seesaw gesture. "People forget. But the _universe_ doesn't. And in a cosmic sense Rory is on his, oh..." He counted on his fingers. "Third regeneration." He shook his head.

"What, like a Time Lord?" said Rory.

The Doctor made a face. "No! I mean, if it helps, yes. But no." The two humans traded a glance, which the Doctor pretended not to notice. "Now, Amy and I—and you, of course, Rory—know the truth. Rory's himself. No more or less. But you can't erase your _soul_, and two thousand years leaves a hell of a mark. It's why the Gorgorans came after us at Stormcage, I think. And why the Chvet tossed us out."

"So," said Rory. "Why didn't they attack us straight away? Why wait till I was alone?" He had answered his own question, but he didn't withdraw it.

"I was there to protect you," said the Doctor. "And the TARDIS." He paused. This was his moment of truth, Rory thought. He wouldn't be able to paper over the next bit, or take it back. "And I made it more... difficult for people to see you. You see, that's what I'm really apologising for. When I did that, I hurt you."

"How?" said Rory. "I feel fine." He looked at Amy, who shrugged.

"What do you remember about that time? All that waiting. All those years."

Rory thought. "Very little."

"Do you remember the last time I asked you that question?"

Rory had a flash of a headache. It was cold and sharp He was back at in Stormcage, facing his worst fear, a strange creature with a name that it wasn't allowed to speak. He blinked. The memory was gone, lost in a familiar fog. It was like trying to hold on to water.

"Have you still got the key I gave you?"

Rory took it out. The Doctor had given it to him just after Stormcage. It was funny, now that he had time to think about it. The Doctor had wanted to be _sure_ Rory had it, before he went off on his own. _Take care not to lose it,_ the Doctor had told him, back on the ledge. _I don't want to spend the rest of the year fishing it out. _

That was a good one.

"Have you ever looked at it? I mean closely."

He looked. Closely. At first it was just a brass key. Just Rory's TARDIS key: the Doctor's promise that Rory had a place in the universe and didn't need anyone's permission to go there. But on the reverse, on thick end, there was a tiny black spot.

"It's a little antenna," said the Doctor. "Broadcasting a little message that says: forget."

"What?" said Rory. "_What_?"

"You _brainwashed_ us?" said Amy. She scooted away from him as if he'd gone suddenly feral.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor repeated. "It was a mistake."

Rory could tell that he meant it. Amy couldn't answer. She was pale, and angry, and scrambling for her own TARDIS key on a lanyard around her neck.

"That's why I couldn't understand," said Rory. "I thought it was normal. It sounded like normal speech. And then the teacher said—I thought I was losing my mind. _You made me think I was going crazy_."

"You're not," the Doctor assured him. "You're fine. More than fine. You can get very good at a lot of things, with two millennia of practice. Like telepathy. Some other stuff, too. I would really love to know how you learned Fa'dkin Chvet langauge, for instance. They don't get out much."

"I don't have one," said Amy, turning her head to peer at her key. "I don't have an antenna."

The pieces were falling into place. "You used me," Rory burst out. "You messed with my mind but you still managed to use me to, what, save yourself from your own past? And how did that work exactly? Because I'm starting to think _that_ is the cherry on top of this whole thing."

"If it makes any difference," said the Doctor, "it wasn't entirely out of self-interest."

"Oh, really."

"Really," said the Doctor. "I didn't know any of that would happen until it did. If I had known I wouldn't have done it. You're absolutely right that it was unfair to treat you that way. But I didn't do it on purpose. Please believe me." He looked back and forth from Amy to Rory, desperation in his eyes. He didn't want them to hate him. That was all. He wasn't even asking for forgiveness yet.

"It was in the _past_," said Rory. "If you didn't do it on purpose, how did you get here now?"

"Time can be rewritten," said the Doctor, as if that was an explanation.

Amy glared. "I think you should say you're sorry again."

"I'm sorry," the Doctor repeated. "I wasn't trying to hurt you."

Rory was still touching his TARDIS key. He closed his hand around it. "Why did you bring us there at all?" said Rory. "If not to save yourself."

"Because I'm going to sort this," said the Doctor. "I left a few things there that I think will help. And later on, because the other Doctor saw things a bit more clearly. That can happen, in times of trouble. A clear head."

"Yes," said Rory dryly. "I thought he was a very clearheaded man. I got that impression."

The Doctor held out a hand. "It's an easy fix. All you need to do is give it back, and you'll remember everything. I'll give you another key if you want—a regular one. Or not, if you don't trust me anymore." The Doctor flinched away from the thought. "Say the word and I'll take you home. No one will ever bother you again—not even me."

He was not a cruel person, Rory knew. Just arrogant and careless and not-quite-human. You had to make allowances.

Amy said, "No." The word was past her lips before she knew what she was saying. "Oh, Rory, not yet. Please. I'm not ready."

And this was the only decision that ever needed to be made. It was too early to fold. They were staying in. "You shouldn't have done it," said Rory.

The Doctor shook his head. "I should've. It was sensible. But I should have given you the choice."

Rory nodded. _"_Yeah," he said empathetically. "As a matter of fact I think you ought to run that kind of thing by _a lot _of other people before you do it." This was as close as he ever came to a face-up challenge to the Doctor.

A wistful smile crossed the Doctor's lips, and his eyes went distant for a moment, as if he were having an inside joke with himself. "I'll keep that in mind." But whatever thought had struck him, he didn't share. He shook it off and beckoned. "If you disagree, then change it. Give back the key. Find out all the secrets you're keeping from yourself."

That was it, then. Rory was holding the key to two thousand years of his own history. He looked at Amy, but she only looked back with wide eyes. This wasn't a decision she could make. She hadn't been there. Hollow images churned in Rory's brain, like plot points from some half-remembered dream.

He let it go. In fact, he dropped it like it was on fire. It fell till the lanyard caught it.

"No," he said.

"You can change your mind," said the Doctor. "It's up to you now."

"No," Rory repeated, more firmly. Two thousand _years_? He'd be so far ahead of his wife that he wouldn't be able to see her any more. Never, never. "It's over."

"Good man." The Doctor patted him on the shoulder and got up. "Now, I think Rory's earned his choice, don't you, Amy? Where would you like to spend your spring holiday? New York? London?" The Doctor grimaced. "Leadworth?"

"But I thought we could stay," Amy protested. She got onto her feet to watch him set the TARDIS.

"Of course you can," said the Doctor. "As long as you like. But I'm allowed personal business, hmm? A couple of months on my own? And I bet Rory wouldn't mind a break either."

"But—" said Amy.

"London," said Rory. "The suburbs." Amy had never liked Leadworth. She wouldn't be happy there. "We'll need some money." He felt a twinge of guilt about this last bit, but it was the kind of thing the Doctor forgot if you didn't remind him. He never needed money. The Doctor had the TARDIS—but London cost.

"See?" said the Doctor.

Amy knew when she was beat. She folded. "Can we have a garden?"

"You can have whatever you want," said the Doctor. He pulled the big lever.

It was time to go home.


	15. Loose ends

The Doctor lay on his back on the TARDIS floor, one hand behind his head, and stared up at the ceiling. He was in a mood, which was not at all enhanced by the imminent departure of his friends. He'd wasted little time between the decision to make them go, and coming back to Earth. It was the right decision, but the TARDIS would be quiet without them, and empty, and the Doctor would be alone.

Many things about this were not good.

The problem, the Doctor observed, was that wisdom had diminishing returns. After the first hundred years or so, things got a bit runny in the morality department. Acts that were unquestionably evil _in their time_ could become good—or at least the foundation for good and important things—if you waited long enough. This could warp your perspective. In his darker moments, he wondered if the longer you lived, the more warped you got.

The Doctor had been alive for a very long time.

On the other hand, he would never get older the way Amy and Rory had. The idea of staying in one place gave him the creeps. He'd never do something just because it was sensible. Morality, curiosity, courage: these were motivations he understood. He wanted to be deeply involved in everything. He wasn't like Rory. If he'd lost thousands of years, he'd turn the Universe over to get them back. He wouldn't be able to rest. He'd need to know.

Decades of observation led the Doctor to believe that this was the fundamental difference between him and most humans. Rory and Amy could settle. The Doctor just shifted.

The wisdom of ages and adolescent restlessness were a dangerous—all right, potentially _apocalyptic—_combination. It needed management. This was just one of the reasons the Doctor didn't do _alone_ anymore.

Of course, it was also terrifically dull.

A shadow loomed over him. It was Amy Pond with a backpack. "Sulking already."

"Just thinking about how peaceful it will be with you lot out of here."

Amy scoffed. She sat down near his head, her expression saying that she would not be teased. "I still don't understand why you're making us leave so _soon."_

"Overdue library books," said the Doctor. "Have to rush them back."

"You're going to investigate, aren't you," said Amy. She leaned forward like they were in on a secret. "You should take us with you. We helped this time, didn't we?"

They had. Both of them had—if only they knew how much. The Doctor remembered everything. They were new memories, but solid and sure. Never mind what he had said to Rory; the Eighth Doctor could never have become the Ninth Doctor if Rory hadn't been there. Only a mystery like that could prod the Doctor back into the universe, and the resolution of one of the Doctor's oldest conflicts could only be a good thing. And Amy had helped up scare another piece to a very strange puzzle. It was a nice big corner piece, too. For the first time, he thought he might be able to catch a glimpse of the big picture.

Now, the Doctor thought he could stop Rory's long, strange past from following him home, which had an appealing symmetry if you thought about it.

"Is it too dangerous?" said Amy. "Is that the problem? 'Cause we're not afraid." She turned her head so the Doctor couldn't look her in the eye. "I mean, we're afraid, but we're not cowards."

"I know," said the Doctor. "That's the point."

"That's the point," Amy echoed. She frowned and squinted. "What does that even _mean?"_

_ "_You'll have plenty of time to work it out," said the Doctor. He heard Rory come down the stairs. The Doctor squeezed Amy's hand got up in one energetic leap. He put one hand on the TARDIS to steady himself. "But not too long. That's a promise." He met both Rory and Amy's eyes in turn. Rory was also carrying a backpack. For once he looked eager to be off.

"It _is_ twenty-eleven out there," said Rory, a bit anxiously. He pointed at the door. "That's a two, a zero, and an eleven."

"Have a little faith," said the Doctor. He patted the TARDIS control panel. "She's a lot more reliable these days."

"London," Rory repeated. "_Twenty-eleven_."

"I'll only be eight weeks, maybe ten," said the Doctor. "If you _really_ want to know what I'm up to, look for me in books." He winked at Amy. "Rory, that key will run a lot longer than two months, but I can't guarantee that it will keep working the same way. You might get some bad dreams." There were some other things that could happen, but the Doctor didn't think they were very likely and saw no reason to alarm anyone. "Just think happy thoughts. That's what I do."

"Right," said Rory. He started to say something, then decided not to. Instead he shook the Doctor's hand. There was hesitation there, but no anger. Rory didn't do grudges. It was one of the things the Doctor liked best about him.

"See you," said Rory, though he didn't seem too thrilled about the prospect.

The Doctor grinned. "Count on it."

Then Amy hugged him, which was very nice. "Stay out of trouble," she said. "And come back, okay?"

"I always come back," said the Doctor. "Like a bad penny."

Though, to be honest, the Doctor had never had a bad penny turn up more than once.

Amy stepped away sniffling, but when Rory took her hand, she looked at him with perfect trust, so that was all right.

When they left, they didn't look back.

###

The Clockworks displaced time. In its diminished size, it didn't do much but tick across the Doctor's palm, but it felt a lot heavier than it should, and where it had crawled it left a red mark. He set it on the dashboard.

He remembered the tank's empty control room. Amy had made up a lie good enough to get them to the next step, but that wouldn't hold forever. _Someone_ had been there, and when you had as many enemies as the Doctor, invisible ones were merely the start of the list. He would have would would have to think about that. In fact, he would have to do something about it. Soon.

_Meanwhile._.. from one of his other pockets he took a small scrap of paper. It did not displace time, but it was displaced _in_ time. A con artist named Patrick Belkin had given it to the Doctor when he was in Stormcage Prison some days ago. It said, _I saved him—_meaning Rory—_now we're even._ The only problem with that was, Patrick Belkin didn't owe the Doctor anything. They had never even met face-to-face.

It was high time to get that sorted. The Doctor unfolded the paper and licked the back. It tasted of mostly of prison—_ech_—but also of 1740 or so, in Earth years. Florida, if he wasn't mistaken. Colonial Florida. _Yes_. Brilliant.

He rolled a blue globe and pressed a red button.

The world turned, and everything changed forever.

###

Amy put her head on Rory's shoulder and hooked a hand on his elbow.

They had landed in a narrow alley in an old part of the city. There were roundhead cobblestones under their feet, and stone arches over their heads. But it was OK, because Amy could see plenty of satellite dishes. From one of the flats above, she heard a television. And it _felt_ like 2011. It was kind of like how you knew you were in your own house. They were home, and they were ahead of their younger selves; everything was in order.

The couple stepped out onto the pavement. The street opened up in front of them, and they saw modern cars and people talking on mobile phones. There were skyscrapers and crowds and billboards. The air was fresh and cool. It was very early spring. For once in the Doctor's life, he was right on time. Maybe he _was_ getting more reliable.

Rory groaned. Amy looked up and laughed.

The sun set behind the Eiffel Tower.


End file.
